I’ve always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It’s quiet and dark—the perfect time for creativity.

The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things.

Life is not a submarine.

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You’ll never wish you’d held back a little more.

What are minnows but brief flashes? And what are thoughts? And how do you capture a brief flash, even for a second?

Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

I disagree with the advice of ‘write about what you know.’ Write about what you need to know, in an effort to understand.

If you were waiting for a sign that you’re meant to be a writer…THIS IS IT.

Your story must told.Live a life legacy- written book or notes.This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit...

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

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

Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that’s too much pressure and you’ll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?

Write, what you feel about. Feel, what you have written about.

I tell everyone who asks me about writing…almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it’s that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!

Speed is not always a constituent to great work, the process of creation should be given time and thought.

For every idea that’s been done to DEATH, there’s a child being BORN who hasn’t read it yet. Don’t kill your dragons.

Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)

Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emily—comparatively good, that is—and all the rest balderdash—balderdash, Emily.””I—suppose so,” said Emily faintly.Her eyes brimmed with tears—her lips quivered. She could not help it. Pride was hopelessly submerged...

I don’t get writer’s block because I don’t believe in it. I believe you sit in front of the computer and force your fingers to get something on the screen.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for...

Writer’s block isn’t always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

Ignore people who say you can’t do it, even if this person is yourself.

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are...

Maybe those sailors will write bad poems, but the same men would have kept dull diaries, too. The problem has to do not with the evidence but with the witness. The point is not the...

The only difference between writers and people who don’t write is that writers aren’t afraid to display their demons.

According to Wallace, the expectation that art amuses is a ‘poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with,’ since it places all of the power with the audience, sometimes breeding resentment on the...

For me, art that’s alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

But if you don’t understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.

Description is the color in the canvas of your story.

Writing is the act of discovery.

No good story is quite true.

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don’t tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: “At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You’d be surprised how effective it can be.

The only ‘ironclad rules’ in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.

Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.

When asked for advice on how to write a short story, Carlos Cortés responded, No advice. Every writer has to exorcise his own demons.

A watched pot never boils.” It’s the same with success. So? Throw that burner on HIGH and just keep on cooking. Dinner will be ready soon.

It isn’t enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the...

Write drunk (on emotion); edit sober (on rationality and intention).Faulkner, reimagined by me.

Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn’t work on your story. Focus on what you can do today.Sit down, and write.

Writings are thoughts in a defined moment.

Aspiring authors, get this through your head. Cover art serves one purpose, and one purpose only, to get potential customers interested long enough to pick up the book to read the back cover blurb. In...

…a writer without authority? Impossible. as Kenneth Burke says, creation implies authority in the sense of originator….

Writing is the neck muscle allowing us to see the important stuff in our periphery.

You can only write by putting words on a paper one at a time.

An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn’t have to–and indeed cannot–capture the hearts of every possible reader...