In Ruth’s view, they looked ‘like a couple’ because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them – they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such...

Lewis Carroll. He was an odd one. Real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Completely denied having anything to do with the Alice books. Daft as a brush. You’d have liked him!

I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as they interacted with him–they were part of his “road,” the infinite range of...

I’m more influenced by my own interests than anyone else’s. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can’t entertain anyone else.

Don’t be indifferent about any random idea that occurs to you, because each and every idea is for a particular purpose. it may not be beneficial to you, but can be what others are craving...

Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I’d fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, ‘So this...

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

…people quote proverbs without realizing they’re really in awe of the authority of their truth and the power of their expression…

a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.

Even the best cook can’t make chicken soup out of his own feet. There aren’t so terribly many ingredients in anyone’s life, less meat than there is on a sparrow. The average person could come...

Socially interacting with a storyteller can be a frustrating challenge because a portion of her awareness is constantly sorting through the details of a developing book. And while you may successfully engage in a meaningful...

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Much has been made about the death of the novel and the end of literature as it’s seen to be assailed by technology, by the web, by the many and varied new forms of entertainment...

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world.

Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get...

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

Most inspirational writers were born as driftwood and will say they have been beaten against every shoreline during their life. We understand storms. We understand drowning. We understand being devalued. We understand being stranded alone...

You describe your Wonderful Night very well. That is, you describe the place & the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well—but not the thing itself—the setting but not the...

Sometimes writing is like playing with fire… like trying to tame an uncontrollable beast.

Three words for a writer: Make me care.

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then...

Theoretically speaking a good reader should also be a good learner, whatever the century and the place!

History is made not simply with events, but by remembering those events, a double drumbeat like a heartbeat. History can be written not only with books but with ceremonies. Yet a real event read about...

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

There is an audience for everything; our job as writers is to do the work and provide readers with a choice.

I want everyday magic.

I look out over my life and see a million question marks with only a few definitive exclamation points. I’m living for the next exclamation.

When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend’s sisters,I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was...

Voy a escribir una mierda”, habría de repetirse el escritor antes de empezar a escribir. Las críticas entonces pasarán de largo. En todo caso, el libro constituirá un logro si, en efecto, es una mierda....

If writers write, then rangers range. And I’d like to wake up every morning and be a mother, so I could eat my own clothes.

If you’re going to fall in love with anyone, fall in love with a writer. Allow yourself to become immortalised in words.

The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. — It is not fair. — He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of...

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

A lot of writers, probably because they’re sensitive, which makes them want to be writers, have fears about their masculinity, so they overcompensate by having an interest in boxing and tough-guy things.

It’s not given even to the greatest writers to tell someone else’s story.

It must take a lot of self-discipline,’ she said.’Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have much.’ He felt himself about to say again, and unable to resist saying, that ‘Dumas, I think it was Dumas,...

A writer leads a hyphenated-life with words

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don’t get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

99% of natural poets discovered their talents through love letters.

Writers often have the cleanest windows, floors, fridges and toilets, the most up-to-date filing system or the best record for returning calls or e-mails because, in the moment, just about any task seems more palatable...

Have tea, might write,” Laura returned.

I am the penny whistle of American literature.

Replace your old books with the book you’ve always wanted to write.

Are artists and writers the only people entitled to lives of their own?

When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags....

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, “Where do you get your ideas?” When people ask me this, my usual response is, “Ideas are the easy part. The hard part...