"For great writers, retirement is a fairly recent career option."

"There have always been writers, like Thomas Hardy and Saul Bellow, who kept at it until the very end, but there are many more, like Proust, Dickens and Balzac, who died prematurely, worn out by writing itself. Margaret Drabble may have started a trend when, in 2009, at the age of 69, she announced that she was calling it quits. [Alice] Munro said she was encouraged by the example of Philip Roth, who declared that he was done last fall, as he was getting ready to turn 80. 'I put great faith in Philip Roth,' she said, adding, 'He seems so happy now.'"

"Much of my life has been spent in the effort to live by more coherent ideas. I even know which ones."

A line from Saul Bellow's "Herzog," quoted by Joshua Rothman in a New Yorker article titled "The Impossible Decision," about deciding whether to go to grad school.