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...

The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him.

Pay attention, and use your imagination.

Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. … All those things.

And this is what being an artist means, being a poet? To sacrifice yourself for your art, sacrifice your heart for your art, because it’s only through something broken that something beautiful can grow.

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It’s small mining– small mining. You’re too young a...

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

…but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: ‘My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, “The Cookiepants Hypotenuse.”‘ Or else they get...

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But...

The pen to a writer is like a cigarette to a smoker; they need it to take the edge off.

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

Am I making something worth while?I’m not sure.I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,but am I making...

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement...

In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you...

Never put off writing until you are better at it.

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask...

Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.

Write to your fear.

MYTH: Beautiful Writing Trumps AllREALITY: Storytelling Trumps Beautiful Writing, Every Time

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don’t have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

Write what should not be forgotten.

Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

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

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom...

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He...

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...

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

The truth is that most writers are needy.

I learn my world through writing.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Stories. Character. Dialouge. Entire worlds created on the page. Worlds that could sweep you away or frighten you, make you laugh or cry. Worlds that allowed you to escape to another country or time. Worlds...

I don’t think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don’t...

It’s amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story… don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words–the language. Don’t be...

My writing, it’s my way of making sense of everything. My way to feel whole. May I never be complete and may I never feel content – please, let me always have the need, always...

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...

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It’s all there and you just have to find it.

Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it’s all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building...

I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it’s all the same genre.

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear,...

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.