Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.
Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.
Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.
Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.
People are both more willing and less willing to talk to you when you're a writer.
The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.
When you're an author, you're always two people. Jasper the writer is different from Jasper the person at home.
I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language.
I think most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.
