You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred...

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as...

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

We can imagine how to create and be creative on a beach in a cosmic sky. No grain of sand is merely just sandy; with imagination at hand the sand can become whatever you fancy.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the...

For the fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind’s fertility: it contains the mind’s promise, since its fertility depends on the unexpected rather than the expected, depends on what we do not...

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth...

Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection.

MFA in a Box is designed to help you to find the courage to put truth into words and to understand that writing is a life-and-death endeavor — but that nothing about a life-and-death endeavor...

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”[From the preface.]

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a...

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never...

… an artist should paint from the heart, and not always what people expect. Predictability often leads to the dullest work, in my opinion, and we have been bored stiff long enough I think.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

If we allow our “high creativity” to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people...

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see “creator” as the literal term for “artist”. I am suggesting you take the term “creator” quite literally. You are seeking...

I am an artist. Any artist knows that their creations, their pieces must express an array of human emotion and experience. From the juvenile and innocent, to the erotic and the dangerous, and everything in...

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I...

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be...

To write is to feel the dance of your soul swirling in a dream that drips imagination onto paper.

It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”[MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

sometimes i wake upin the middleof the nightand findpoetry splatteredall over my bed.

Art is the overflow of emotion into action.

I could write about how I feel when I sing, write and create something from heartbreak, sorrow, sadness or just simply nothingness. How nothingness can become the most beautiful, unexplainable feeling that makes you forget...

Essential acts to master for self realisation;Master the act of learning.Master the act of writing.Master the act of reading.

All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has...

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens...

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and...

All trademarks, company names, registered names, products, characters, mottos, logos, jingles and catchphrases used or cited in this work are the property of their respective owners and have only been mentioned and or used as...

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don’t have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It’s not a good arrangement....

Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it’s utterly glorious.”National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk

Y algo golpeaba en mi alma, fiebre o alas perdidas, y me fui haciendo solo, descifrando aquella quemadura y escribí la primera línea vaga, vaga, sin cuerpo, pura, tontería pura sabiduría del que no sabe...

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don’t want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don’t.Write every day.Keep writing.

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don’t care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that...

Sometimes are our stupidity makes our work Creative.

It’s very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and...

There’s the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren’t. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in...

to be a poet meansto live with a permanent wound forever susceptibleto either the shade of the skyor someone’s eyes.

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed ‘fundamental’ by my betters. Defiance has made...

Your experiences are the foundation for your story; your imagination takes it from there.

When dreams come true creativity becomes art.

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years...

You can’t let fear and indecision sink your creativity—they do not easily release their hold.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

… The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper,...

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.[Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]