The writer is all alone.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day year after year alone.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers all alone in their studios with no one watching.

I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people but I really do my best work alone and I think I would want to - if I did something again I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.

I once had a boyfriend who couldn't write unless he was wearing a necktie and a dress shirt which I thought was really weird because this was a long time ago and no one I knew ever wore dress shirts let alone neckties it was like he was a grown-up reenacter or something.

And I find - I'm 63 and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer you better like being alone.

If I want to be alone some place I can write I can read I can pray I can cry I can do whatever I want - I go to the bathroom.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone but also on trees and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.