I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work — one that is just about respectfully showing up for your vocation day after day, steadily doing your best, and letting go...

The swing between confronting the dangerous or brutal and the beautiful or the kind is one of the elements of being human that I have battled with all my life. That mixture of love and...

Some writers may never create a work. Their purpose is to help others create their first word.

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie...

Another drink, another sentence, and the writing continues on. . . .

A women’s heart beat is very rapid; it jumps from love to hate, in seconds when in silence there is surely madness.

Writers turn dreams into print.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

I became a writer so that the voices inside my head would become an acceptable occurrence.

His fame as an artist requires very tender care. Look what a mask of diplomacy is painstakingly formed by the whole of that fine profile; he is as wily as a cardinal. He has scented...

My brain is on fire!” to try to help these people understand that this is a headache that needs attention! That’s a metaphor, right? And you use it so that you can be understood. Now...

I don’t need to write a memoir of my life. All you need to do is read one of my books. I’m there.

I am a writer, I’m supposed to be intense and emotional,

You may think that you don’t want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you’ll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

A man was leaning idly against an elm. … The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at...

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody...

What’s interesting about the relationship between gay men and women is there can be a lot of affection, but there’s a line that you don’t cross.

It is not in the gene of an Intellectually blinded person to experience the paradise in the writer’s imagination.

We nurture the candle flames that show the way ahead. We are guerrillas of the word, unsung heroes breathing softly on the embers of the human mind, so that they might re-ignite the hearths around...

I’m sure there are people who are content to run errands and report for work on time and wait, with an enlivening eagerness, for the lunch bell. I wish them well. They have, however, never...

There is something fascinatingly awkward about an author photo. I’m drawn to those glossy shots in the back of books, mostly because the subjects never look happy to be there.

A writer’s primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore’s is to make cents.

Or maybe writers are like vultures. Some people feel we journalists are.” He mimicked a bird of prey and grinned.

Write at a pace that doesn’t surpass your creative flow. Don’t be hasty; don’t be sloppy. Don’t forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and...

1. Write like you’ll live forever — fear is a bad editor.2. Write like you’ll croak today — death is the best editor.3. Fooling others is fun. Fooling yourself is a lethal mistake.4. Pick one...

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

I think it’s incomparably sweet when someone writes something for you.. even if it doesn’t rhyme or even if it isn’t very amorous.. even two lines of hatred written for you acknowledges the fact that...

Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade,” she says, smiling. Comfortable territory. “Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue.”Oh, I am very familiar with the...

Be Shameless. Experiment. This is the only way to identify your true passion.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the...

If God didn’t want me to cross boundaries, then he wouldn’t have made me a writer.

Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.

I am here to listen to the knowledge of my soul and to communicate it through the written word.

Me to Comma: I will never get use to you wanting to butt your way into my sentences — even if you’re right.

I write about romance and passion to savour love twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

Penicillin was as liberating for gay sex as the pill had been for straight sex.

Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one’s own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave...

Color me….BRILLIANT.

When I am alone, I drink my tea with pinkie raised, like a kid playing “tea party.” At times, a fancy British accent is involved. Dahling!

You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, ‘This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone!

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.

I’m a Texas girl, with a California soul.

I always want to do something I haven’t done before and get to work with other actors, writers, or directors that I want to work with.

I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in … but before he ever begins...

He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that...

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it...

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there’s an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn’t for our longing for these things, I doubt...

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