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...

Swearing doesn’t make your argument valid; it just tells the other person you have lost your class and control.

Gemeinsam aber ist allen Menschen, die des guten Willens sind, dieses: daß unsere Werke uns am Ende beschämen, daß wir immer wieder von vorn beginnen müssen, daß das Opfer immer neu gebracht werden muß.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.

Without us, in other words, there can never be hope of a We.

Writing is like daydreaming through your fingers.

I am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when...

You can work to create a bright future.

Every kingdom has three pillars: Poet, Sword and Law.

Every time you go to see Hamlet you don’t expect it to have a happy ending…you’re still enthralled.(Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.)

In writing, there is art. And in art, there is craft …

People won’t see Imagination in something that doesn’t relate to their experience because of their own mental limitations. I want people to escape the expected and ordinary, to escape the regular expectations of a story,...

Literary style is like crystal-ware: the cleaner the wineglass, the brighter the brilliance. As a reader, I agree with those who believe that a colour of the dress, which a character has on, as well...

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words ‘competent,’ ‘finished,’ ‘problem-free,’ fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible...

In writing there is art – and in art there is craft …

You have enough to create what you want.

Creative writing is your ability to develop your inner tension, your libido, your supply of energy and electric charge, turning the charge into an image or thought, and writing down the thought, thus contributing all...

I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: ‘Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire;’ or...

Writing fiction is one of the greatest forms of empathy. It’s not enough to simply write from the perspective of your characters…you have to feel what they feel.

Art is the overflow of emotion into action.

It’s despicable of an author to kill his main personage solely for stirring imagination of indifferent or mean minds.

I often said that writers are of two types.There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many...

Writers fly with imaginary wings.

First time I ever put pen to paper, I had one goal – to build something no one had ever thought of before.

The process doesn’t end there. Stories are more than just images. As you continue in the tale, you get to know the characters, motivations and conflicts that make up the core of the story. This...

Giving these students, teenagers, any form of power over the use of their own words, allowing them to turn everyday raw material into some form of beauty, is a gift beyond measure.

Creativity is a magic wand that works two ways. When you set it in action and seek to create something, it does not just brings into existence that object or work, it also raises in...

Inside is where we meet everyone else; it’s on the outside that we are truly alone.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away – even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of...

Walk with the Creator on the face of earth.

Destroy your life; then put it back together.You’ll get great material, meet some fascinating characters and – side benefit – the skills you develop will give you greater compassion, insight and range with the people...

What is it about us lady authors and our fascination for the exclamation mark?

You don’t write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is...

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...

Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.

Isn’t the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?””Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it’s dead right, there’s no excitement like it. It’s marvelous. It...

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is...

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

If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line.”[Paris Review, interview with Jodi Daynard, The Art of Fiction No. 113, Winter II 1989]

Majina ya vitabu yanapaswa kuchaguliwa kwa mantiki na kwa makini ya hali ya juu mno, kwa sababu ni miongoni mwa vitu vya kwanza watu wanavyoviona na kuvisoma. Watu wakivutiwa na jina la kitabu, au mwandishi;...

You have power within you to create a successful life.

A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I...