Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.

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.

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus...

Even great, best selling writers produce works that fall flat from expectations. This writing thing isn’t easy and everything you produce won’t be a best seller, but you must write anyway. You have to write...

She meant you have to live a story for a time.”And?”And then you can write it, in time. What have you lived?”Kind of a personal question for Twitterland.”Kind of the perfect question to answer in...

There are still so few female directors. There are far fewer writers than we’d like to see.

Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.

I think throughout the 20th century, for some reason, serious writers increasingly had contempt for the average reader. You can really see this in the letters of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.

I didn’t want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for...

The hunger for knowing is what excites me. I get to geek out about editing, be on set, give notes to writers – I love it all.

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on...

An introspective man who doesn’t keep a diary consigns himself to a special hell

Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.

I’d never be where I am if more successful writers hadn’t taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

We need writers who fear nothing. (“Our Goal”)

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they’re writing it!

The self-addressed stamped envelope. The representation of everything that was wrong with the old publishing industry.

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

My fingers burn behind the keys of my typewriter, the lettering fading with every thoughtful strike. The many words I write I dare not stall; my mind perpetually alert for my magnum opus call.

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.

The writers want to know were you made your mistake, no how well your curve is breaking.

Most straight people, and many gay people, especially those who came of age more recently, don’t understand how momentous and difficult coming out was to men and women of this generation. It seems so obvious...

For most digital-age writers, writing is rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it...

I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter.Your name, which I played...

No.’It’s not a bad word. And it is very important to use at times. Practice saying it in the mirror. It’s empowering.

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.

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our...

Great writers experience their dreams. They put them on paper, where others can read about them.

To say that a writer’s hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it’s like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer’s build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The...

With my career I want to either make something or make an impact. Writers both make something, and make an impact.

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

…But…to sing,to dream, to smile, to walk, to be alone, be free,with a voice that stirs and an eye that still can see!To cock your hat to one side, when you pleaseat a yes, a...

It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one’s share of the common cake,...

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they...

I am grateful to the Lord for blessing my path as a writer.

Every writer knows that words are the enemy.

Those who can’t, and can’t teach, translate.(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

This story was a story of our time. And a writer’s attempts not to fathom his time amount but to sounding his mind in it.

I’m still struggling with the fact that due to my own (selfish) desire to be a writer, my children probably won’t have the same opportunities I had growning up. For most students, however, I genuinely...

When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around...

What about his style?” asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted.”Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am...

I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.

…how many writers still dare compare a woman to Nature, like Campion? – there is a garden in her face – how lovely…

Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book.

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

But writing is a queer business. If one does anything that is sharp and keep enough to go over the line, to get itself with the work that is taken seriously, one has to have...

Quotes are echos of voices transporting wisdom, humor, and love. Returning again to the human condition, fleeting once more as a dove.

My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.

We need to stop trying to get attention by seeing who can scream and cry the loudest. Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard.