All Quiet on the Western Front.

The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.

On cable now, the writer is king. Any actor chases that.

Listen to advice. You don’t know how many writer’s conferences I’ve taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

Originality is not writing the story that has never been told, but writing the stories only you can tell.

I would never make up a character who didn’t exist or an event that didn’t transpire. If you’re a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith’s trunk. Behind Tacy’s house the sun had set. A wind had...

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it. That’s how I became a writer. But when you have kids,...

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you...

If it’s your greatest dream, you wouldn’t give up so easily.. So do yourself a favour, find it again & start focusing on anything that will help you materialise it, it’s not going to be...

And so I just kept writing to myself.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful.

…she (the artist, the writer) doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.

Stories of Fantasy are nothing more than the retelling of our own triumphs and sad, sad tragedies … Tod LangleyI have that painted on my office wall and love to stare at it.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long...

I dream that one day I would be a published writer and people would read my books – if not, I would be living in the mountains in a small hut, near a pond where...

As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues...

…but [I] had sworn on the very day of my demobilization never to be under anyone’s orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing.

If I knew what I was thinking […] I would never have become a writer.

A critique is a necessary tool to sharpen your craft.

The writer dreams awake. The killer nightmares awake. (L’écrivain rêve éveillé. – Le tueur cauchemarde éveillé)

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings...

Freedom can choke you if you don’t know how to handle it.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching – that way, you pick up new ideas.

It’s not: I jumped in, and it was cold. No. It was cold, and I jumped in. Always arrange a sentence so you appear to be fearless, when in fact you are far less than...

Write the words “The FIve Senses” on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place...

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don’t want to be writers. They want to have been writers....

Writers are not just writers, they are creators of worlds, sculptors of the mind, they are architects of language.

I wanted to be a literary writer, so I wrote story after story and sent them to ‘The New Yorker.’

I’m pretty sure I’m the only author who intends to take the longest possible route to a destination that will always be over the next hill.

Let you light shine from the inside out.

The nastiest kind of writer is a ghostwriter, who bears people’s children in their body for money.

You Can’t Change Your Life… Until You Change Your Heart, and You Can’t Change Your Heart… Until You Change Your Mind!

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story...

Being a writer is a gift, being an author is amazing, becoming a best seller is everyone’s dream

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and...

I write so the endangered thoughts roaming naked and vulnerable through the misty jungles of my mind aren’t slain by the guns of practical living.

…authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer…

Writing heals my heart like no pill ever could.

We swallowed the chaos because we knew we didn’t want to be ordinary.

She needed the chaos within her in order to discover the extraordinary no man could ever reach.

Be true to the writer within you; tell the story you’re dying to tell in exactly the way you wish to tell it, and don’t trust anyone who tries to sway you otherwise.

Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an ‘off’ day. Trust me, good things will come of it.

Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don’t love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of...

He can see what move I’m planning to make in chess and counters before I can do it. He always knows who the killer is in a detective story. I think he could make a...

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.

I’ve carved out a career for myself really as a writer.