The life we’re given is on a thread, so wear it well.

… in art nothing is more secondary than the author’s intentions.

How do I get inspired? Life.

Sandra L. West and Aberjhani have compiled an encyclopedia that makes an important contribution to our need to know more about one of modern America’s truly significant artistic and cultural movements. It helps us to...

What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your...

Teams that spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade will probably never really learn the trade.

And I love Jane Austen’s use of language too–the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom...

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a...

Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they’re complete, not leading...

I would not employ an author to referee a Ping-Pong match. By their very nature they are biased and bloody-minded. Better put a fox in a henhouse than to ask an author to judge his...

A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

Writing is…. being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense,...

There’s writing power in one word sentences and one sentence paragraphs. Wise authors use them. -Judith Briles

You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons:...

In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the...

It is the writer’s job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.

We need to stop trying to get attention by seeing who can scream and cry the loudest. Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard.

He wondered fleetingly how many people who sat alone for hours as they scribbled their stories practiced talking about their work during their coffee breaks….

If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results – then success is insanity squared!(2012 SCBWI New Member Conference; Richmond, VA)

Film and novel characters are often stereotyped, but racial stereotyping in many novels or films creates & encourages labelling, discrimination & racism. ~Angelica Hopes

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

By their very nature, idiots do not have the intellectual capacity to identify genius. All that idiots are mentally equipped to recognize are other idiots.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on...

i want to bleed ink and shit prose.

A witer’s mind is NEVER silent. It is always conducting the next symphony of words.

I’m not interested in the reviews by critics over the age of 15.

There’s an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine — “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like p...

To most, being locked away in solitary with nothing but pen and paper would prove a hard punishment. What a strange creature who views this as heaven.

That’s another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author,...

You might lose battles in your life time. However, every person that stands bravely on the side of justice, for people that have no voice, wins the true battle—Gods.

I’m going to be a person who writes stories.I never told mom and dad how much I loved them.I wanna be someone who can tell a lot of people how much I love them.

I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

Say something worthwhile and people will listen.

Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville.

In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading...

Jack Kerouac died after throwing up blood. The malt liquor. Then that other guy who shot his wife in the head. Burroughs somebody. And I wonder about literary figures. They’re all drunk and staggering and...

The only man she ever loved. And hated.

We really learn only from those books that we cannot judge. The author of a book that we were able to judge would have to learn from us.

But writers and their woes: they couldn’t be parted. Not for anything.

You ever try holding, say, even a single chapter of a novel in your head? Consciously? All at once?

A writer is simply one who writes words, Even if just 1 person reads it your work, or a 100, or 1million or 100,000 You are a writer.

The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts.

Writing novels is not an illness that need be recovered from. It is my work; it is what I do.

I am a perfectionist in spirit

I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal...

Great writers experience their dreams. They put them on paper, where others can read about them.

The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world’s books into one book, just as Kevin (Kelly) suggested. It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and...

I’m not a stranger,” I said, and pointed to his book. “I’m someone who reads the same authors you do.