Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
Annie Dillard
A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.
Barbara Holland
A writer needs regularity, the same books around her, the same walls. A writer needs self-ordered patterns of time, her own desk, and day after profitable day in order to do her best work.
Carol Shields
Discontent and disorder [are] signs of energy and hope, not of despair.
Cicely Veronica Wedgwood
I’m a writer. I don’t cook and I don’t clean…. Dear child, this place is a mess – my papers are everywhere. It would be exhausting to clean up!
Dorothy West
I love my bed. It is larger than a desk and better designed to hold books and papers. It is softer than a desk and better designed for naps. It is the center of all good things. And, day or night, everyone kows where to find me.
Catherine Schine
There is almost nothing on the desk that is useful – such as a pencil sharpener to sharpen all those pencils. I have often wondered if I swept it all clear – Saint Jerome in his cell – would I do better – churn out the odd masterpiece?
George Plimpton