Look back, but never look down.

It’s a great day to write a best-seller.

Whenever people ask me, “How are your books doing?” or, “How is your book doing?” I just say, “It’s okay.” I mean, what am I supposed to say? I’m a writer; that means I write...

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

A writing day is like any other day. Except I live in my pajamas, I forget to eat, and I suddenly look up, wondering when day turned into night.

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

Writing help us to express our thoughts, to share experiences, to think, to love, to inspire, to motivate, to challenge, to liberate, to learn, to hope, to smile and to wonder.

There are times you wake up in the middle of the night, fingers hit the keyboard and you allow words to flow. That is a writer.

Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.

All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here’s what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: “I’ve shirked two parties,...

There is only one way to overcome the difficulty of writing, and that is to write. Thought only becomes effective and productive at the time of writing.

If I write as well as I golf, I’m in trouble!

When I write, I write obsessively. I try to pace myself, but some fires are too hot to put out.

The night before a deadline, I usually am in desperate need of a back rub. And new wrists. And candy. And little mice to secretly finish the job while I am sleeping.

Writers have come to master nearly every trade. They are inventors and entrepreneurs of character, plot, and dialogue. They are the eager scientists that can’t wait to try out their new experiment. They are the...

Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it...

Reality is just a matter of perception.

The only thing you really need to be a writer is time. Regular, consistent time, quality time when you’re not tired. I write on the bus to and from work, that’s my time, 1 or...

If you’re a writer, you’ll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I’m panting–just pining for the next time I can...

Writing is the neck muscle allowing us to see the important stuff in our periphery.

Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’…...

Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are...

Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.

Conflict. Conflict. Where art thou conflict?

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don’t make for good biographies.

As you near a finish line, do not slow down. Instead, run faster. Give all you have left until it is done. It is then that you may collapse.

Write like a motherfucker.

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.

You will not publish 100% of the books you don’t write.

There is a curious idea among unscientific men that in scientific writing there is a common plateau of perfectionism. Nothing could be more untrue. The reports of biologists are the measure, not of the science,...

a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.

Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it.

We all have a place within us, that would like to rewrite the way our life was written out for us….That’s why people want to become authors.

Grammar, you’re the pickiest noun I know.

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher...

Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.

Q: Best part about being a musical theatre book writer?A: Explaining what that is.

As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven by internecine battles and eluding the control of its founder, Ermes Marana, has broken into two groups: a...

What compels me to write now is the same as all those years ago. It is the love of writing and storytelling, driven by a desire to escape.

The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

You may be a serious writer if ….10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to...

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn’t build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.

Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.

People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.

Never take yourself too seriously. Learn to let go and let the words flow.

Show me the contract.

If the voice inside your head doesn’t sound anything like you, you might be a writer.

I know it’s difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.