Writers should cut as close to the vein as possible. The readers don’t want to be covered in your warm sticky blood, but they want to come as close to it as possible.

How do I get inspired? Life.

It’s remarkable that a device, which fits in your pocket, can hold thousands of books. But a room full of books is an entirely different kind of remarkable.

Writers start with a grain of sand, and then create a beach.

Writers are in many ways like demi-gods. With one stroke of a pen they can give life to a character, or strike them from existence, with nary a twinge of grief at their passing.

Writer does nothing,But think deeply.

Writers begin with a grain of sand, and then create a beach.

The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story

(the modern writer’s aim is) general revelation by suggestion (and) making a very tiny part do for a whole.

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don’t know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened...

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is every happy anywhere.

Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.

Just write. That’s my only tip. And read. I guess that’s two.

Every writer dreams about the day they can step into their fiction and wander its hallways.

A man may be ‘dated’ in the sense that the forms, the set-up, the paraphernalia, whereby he expresses the matter of permanent interest, are those of a particular age. In that sense the greatest writers...

The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give...

Letting go looks different for everyone, I think. Sometimes it’s as simple as waking up one day and deciding not to let your past rule you. Other times it’s a process; slow moving and painful,...

If words come alive on the page, the writer succeeds in connecting to the reader.

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction.

I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.

That’s why I’m a writer.

That moment you realize you are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Live inside your stories, yes, but do not hide behind them.

A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren’t quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.

Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success.

The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.

Children’s reading and children’s thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have...

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be...

All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides,...

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

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.

Writers leave a trail of magic everywhere they go.

Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader…

Words made you mighty. Words, stories, books: they could take you anywhere, and they could go out anywhere in the world. Jenny — Jane — picked up her pen, and began to write.

When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw...

If you’re frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you’ll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.

Writer’s block’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today.

Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.

Asking a writer why they like to write {in the theoretical sense of the question} is like asking a person why they breathe. For me, writing is a natural reflex to the beauty, the events,...

A hundred years ago, an average teenager knew countless authors, and, a sex position or two. Today, an average teenager knows countless sex positions, and, an author or two.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to...

It’s a phenomenal experience jumping from the devious mind of a sorceress bent on conquering the world to the compassionate musing of a queen capable of healing life with a touch—all in a flicker of...

Negative experiences repeat as long as they remain useful to you.

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking ‘What have I achieved?’ rather than ‘What have I enjoyed?’ I’ve been writing about a subject I love as long as I...

Just because everybody uses language, that doesn’t mean that they can write even tolerable prose.

There is somethingmystically sadand beautifulabouthowi will neversee youagainbut meet youagain and againin poetry.

Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour.

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.