A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax...

Because I want to have sex with him–and because that’s sinful–I’m blushing and flushing furiously under his scrutinizing scrutiny.

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all...

You can’t be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living...

Write at a pace that doesn’t surpass your creative flow. Don’t be hasty; don’t be sloppy. Don’t forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and...

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us...

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won’t save it.

Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.

When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is...