Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

The word ‘NO’ is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you.

A cliffhanger is when …

When you fall in love with a writer you will never die.

The fact of the matter is that readers and audiences are never blank slates: individuals see in a work whatever they need to see at that moment.

It’s better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.

Thought for the day: Twitter…140 character limit…must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers…

We can’t worry about meaning. Ari proposed to us that meaning is a consumer item. Some people manufacture it through religion, philosophy, nationhood, politics, and some people buy it. But an artist is not a...

I write because that is what I am supposed to do.

This is a little secret that all writers share: We have two lives; the one we live on Earth and the one we live in our books.

Bootlicking is only a way to get published, not to become a writer

It was only after two years’ work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a...

Woolrich had a genius for creating types of story perfectly consonant with his world: the noir cop story, the clock race story, the waking nightmare, the oscillation thriller, the headlong through the night story, the...

The difference between writers and readers is similar to the difference between expressionism and impressionism. Writers want to express themselves and readers want to be impressed.

The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.

As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about the Air Chrysalis is that it’s not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writer’s sense of ‘I want...

Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking,...

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthly and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas’s last book: mother lying-in...

There’s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.

Never Let The Roosters Wake You!

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have...

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real...

If your looking to write a book, your creativity, originality and simplicity is what will distinguish you.

The words of the bards come down the centuries to us, warm with living breath.

…it’s not the stories – it’s the pain and the joy and the people who stay with you long after the stories are told …

There are more writers who read than readers who write.

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition— and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks...

This is the nature of love.” Vashet said. “To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. This is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to paper all complete,...

My job as a poet, is not to succumb to despair but to find in words, an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we’d still be sitting in caves … if we weren’t already extinct.

A story is a part of the writer’s soul. Told to the world.

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don’t have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.

I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres – the fiction has to be real inside your head.

Don’t ever trust anyone who’s writing a book. They make up lies for a living.

You say you’re a writer but you’re depressed. Not an excuse; write from there. Write some depressing sh*t. Believe me. You will have plenty of readers who can relate. Remember writers write.

All I really want to do today is go to the book store, drink coffee and read.

The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.

My father once admonished me to master the laws that govern fine writing until I could weave my words into worlds. If ever I accomplish that feat, I will sign my name to the tale.

There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.

People who understand everything get no stories.

Love is benign only when it gets what it wants. Otherwise love can be far more destructive than mindless sex.

A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synaesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardise...

What would normal people think if they knew what went on in a writer’s mind below the surface? They’d think him even more around the bend than they had previously supposed if they could see...

What you really want is all too often hidden just behind what you think you want.

Let life be the foundation. Be brave. Wander deep inside yourself to the little room no one knows about. Fling the door wide open and write.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

…hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV – I...