You want me to begin a novel with The two women were alone in the London flat? - Doris Lessing

There is only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.