Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul.

I don’t think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don’t...

Plot comes from the mind but the characters come from the heart!

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into...

Books are like rivers, meandering this way and that, but taking us on a steady, flowing course to somewhere different.

I do not recommend writing a screenplay in two weeks.

If you’re going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.

The thing I’ve learned is that thinking is not writing.

TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO MAKE ART.

Make time to write every day. The writing muscle is like any other muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.

…and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be...

Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to ‘lay it on’ in the telling. Aim for...

Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when if feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

It’s good to write badly. Things can only get better.

So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. “This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends.” He stared at the paintings for...

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages...

If we are artists- hell, whether or not we’re artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn’t...

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

If you only had a year left to live, what book would you write?Now, write that book.

Build your novel one word at a time. Remember that minutes = novels.

Why do I write? Because I like telling stories and I don’t like repeating myself (insert chuckle here).

…it’s merely writing, but you have to adjust your ear – I speak quietly – I sob – I whisper…

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

You’re allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character.

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.

Don’t say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the...

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.

I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It’s easier to dance when you finish writing.

Make it unique and make it shine.

Don’t let yourself slip and get any perfect characters… keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.

When you’re writing, don’t forget to keep your favorite audience in mind–you.

Imagination is more than just the key. It’s the feathers you place on your wings of thought that allow your work to fly high. Only in soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly...

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

…you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you’ve sold your first book.

I have an idea and a first line — and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of...

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one’s curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present...

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next...

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

Give all that you can. No more. No less. Every. Single. Day.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

Shut up, Ray.

Do you think you’re not ‘ready’ to start that big story idea/project you’ve been thinking about forever?Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of...

Hypocrisy is our friend. Power structures have to pretend to hold values in order to win the loyalty of at least some of society. We can use the gap between those professed values and reality...

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

…you do violence with your words if you force them – art is given – the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands – call it a Muse …

Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.

On the Writing Process:”When in doubt, take it out.,

Don’t give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn’t what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what’s on the...

What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do...