I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

Why do the lives of writers seem so… train-wrecky?

Don’t think too much. There’ll be time to think later. Analysis won’t help. You’re chiseling now. You’re passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There’s something there. It isn’t...

Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered...

What these critics forget is that printing presses in themselves provide no guarantee of an enlightened outcome. People, not machines, made the Renaissance. The printing that takes place in North Korea today, for instance, is...

Bir kitabı okuyup bitirdiğiniz zaman, bunu yazan keşke çok yakın bir arkadaşım olaydı da, canım her istediğinde onu telefonla arayıp konuşabilseydim diyorsanız, o kitap bence gerçekten iyidir.

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set...

Writers are not narcissists. They simply acknowledge that what they find interesting is not unique to them.

writing as a form of prayer”: he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life.

I feel more related to some American crime writers than I do to Stieg Larsson.

When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet’s company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of....

Le paradis des écrivains, c’est l’endroit où vous décidez de réécrire la vie comme vous auriez voulu la vivre. Car la force des écrivains, Marcus, c’est qu’ils décident de la fin du livre.

If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer’s life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment,...

The life of a writer is directed by a mad impulsive muse, that can tell them to cancel all their storyline: a creative divergent devil.

I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.

You know how writers are… they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

…if you’ve got writer’s block, you aren’t empty – maybe it’s just like Twitter – overwhelmed, and loading seems to be taking a while…

A writer’s pen depreciates with every word that it writes. Whereas she appreciates with every word that she writes.

But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, “alright sucker, now what?

your wet-T-shirt librarian with the punk rock hair is helping me out just fine.

People add color to their story because they think it happened in black and white.

Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they’re just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.

The best writers tend to look the roughest in photos. At least that’s the excuse I use for why I look so bad in mine.

If you can read & write then the opportunities are endless, if you just believe in yourself then anything is possible, you can become anyone and do anything, what’s more is, you can take others...

Come se nel cuore della natura di uno scrittore ci fosse la purezza. Il cielo aiuti un simile scrittore! Come se Joyce non avesse annusato oscenamente le mutande di Nora. Come se nell’anima di Dostoevskij...

There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers – as many different responses as there are readers.

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness.

Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.

We writers constantly try to build up our own confidence by getting published, making sales, winning prizes, joining cliques or proclaiming theories. The passion to write constantly strips this vanity aside and forces us to...

People visit exposed and vulnerable; writers live there

Sophisticated readers understand that writers work out their anger, their conflicts, their endless grief and rolling list of loss, through their stories. That however mean-spirited or diabolical, it’s only a story. That the darkness in...

And I’ve learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.

I hope I don’t write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself “When did they live?” I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live!...

In the new style, homosexuals and heterosexuals could be equally unhappy, equally happy, and equally screwed up.

To prepare to write, I don’t surround myself with books. I surround myself with feelings.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

I swooned again – I had that moment of falling in love with reading again.

Nothing is louder than silence.

A writer’s brain is full of little gifts, like a piñata at a birthday party. It’s also full of demons, like a piñata at a birthday party in a mental hospital. The truth is, it’s...

To construct mechanically the brain of a somniferous tale, it is not enough to dissect nonsense & mightily stupefy the reader’s intelligence with renowned doses, so as to paralyze his faculties for the rest of...

Surviving a stupor of madness,drunk silence ‘have we not fingered the foulest wounds and left them unhealed ?

I avoided writers very carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can.

Live, Love and be grateful you are capable of it.

Dear Aspiring Writer, you are not ready. Stop. Put that finished story away and start another one. In a month, go back and look at the first story. RE-EDIT it. Then send it to a...

Your only responsibility as a writer is to be true to the story that has chosen you as its writer.

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

Many children’s writers don’t have children of their own.

Hester Lipp had written Where the Sidewalk Starts, an inexplicably acclaimed book of memoir, recounting — in severe language and strange, striking imagery — Lipp’s childhood and adolescence on a leafy suburban street in Burlington....

and everyone wants to read the poem we’re afraid to write.

It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.