…ugly interlopers threaten to choke off your story, depriving it of much-needed nutrition, sunlight and water. Identify and cut those weeds – the life-sucking adverbs, the shade-killing descriptions that don’t move the story forward, the...

It is a wise writer who knows his own subconscious.

Plot comes from the mind but the characters come from the heart!

(…) deve-se evitar toda prolixidade e todo entrelaçamento de observações que não valem o esforço da leitura. (…) É sempre melhor deixar de lado algo bom do que incluir algo insignificante. (…) Sobretudo, não dizer...

If you see it in Strunk and White it’s so.

Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight….what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], “Tell your daughter three things.” Tell her to read…Tell...

When a solid first draft of an original tale is complete…you feel as if you could do anything.

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don’t think clearly–too many thoughts bump into one another. Trains of...

Putting pen to paper without first deciding the route and pace at which to scribe is like setting off on a bicycle without first checking the tyres.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.

Writer’s a lovers quarrel – encounters breathe the quill…

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

For some reason, a lot of you reject what you hear and see in your heads. If you go too long ignoring it, it builds up and then you do all sorts of weird things....

If you live with dogs, you’ll never run out of things to write about.

Three words for a writer: Make me care.

I think the reason why I don’t read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand...

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a...

I just slept for fifteen hours straight. Yes, writing a musical is THAT exhausting!

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not...

Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.

Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting—that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is...

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

I’m in love with writing, but sometimes I swear it hates me.

The Bible should be taught in schools – in English, with all the other fiction.

Each night, I close my eyes and dream. In the morning, I open my eyes again, but the dreaming doesn’t stop.

Writing is what happens when the words in your head are overpowered by the words in your heart.

A veces tengo la impresión de que escribo por simple curiosidad intensa. Es que, al escribir, me entrego a las sorpresas más inesperadas. Es a la hora de escribir que muchas veces me vuelvo consciente...

Proper writing ink comes in a bottle, can be swirled like brandy in a glass, and smells like apple blossom after rain.

Every writer or wanna-be writer has ideas for books. The problem isn’t finding an idea, it’s choosing one

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

Ink, a Drug.

The thing I want to write most is the next thing I write.

Hey Revision. You can be a pain but you do make Book better.

You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort....

Give all that you can. No more. No less. Every. Single. Day.

Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge,...

When sitting down to write a letter, it always pays to calm one’s mood, collect one’s thoughts, and have a plan.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

True writers know that writing is not something they feel required to do,or to make a living they must do, it is quite frankly like breathing. Somecan breathe often and fluently, some short breaths, some...

Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society.

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible,...

There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing forlife. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises….If you write for life, you’ll work hard; you’ll do what’s honest,not what pays

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy