"Writers are very dangerous people, you shouldn't know them."

"[...]I have to force it. And then after – and this is real compulsion, real self-flagellation – it kind of takes off. But there's a lot of agony before. And sometimes during. And sometimes all through. But just before the end and revelations start coming, that's the joy. But mostly its hell."

A life in writing: Cynthia Ozick