As with writing by candlelight, one’s greatest ideas come from ‘the flickering’ between darkness and light.

I still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn’t travel very far.””What stuff is that?” he’d asked her.”We’re completely at ease being naked in front of...

The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.

Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.

Women’s fiction” doesn’t sound like anything but a slur to my ears.

The first fact of the world is that it repeats itself. I had been taught to believe that the freshness of children lay in their capacity for wonder at the vividness and strangeness of the...

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

Rejection. Rejection. You can’t handle rejection!

I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

A writer’s style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent...

A chronic poet should always be an inveterate nature-lover.

To be a better cook, cook more. To be a better writer, read more.

As a writer, I like the list of “things to strive for” that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:genuine claritygenuine feelingthe right wordthe exact English sentencethe eloquent detailthe rigorous dramatization of story

There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean...

Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better...

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.