…consider yourself a functional character in someone else’s novel – a background character – a person on the street – that’s the perspective …

There’s really only one good writing habit: You must write constantly.

Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

If you are writing a story, miracles or abnormal events may be bad art, or they may not. If, for example, you are writing an ordinary realistic novel and have got your characters into a...

Trust your instincts. Do not confuse ego with instinct. Ego has to be set aside if you want to improve, and we should always want to improve. There is no glass ceiling on being better.

Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity’s sake, and all the better for that; the image created...

There is a difference between fresh and weird. You never want to throw your reader out of the story. Keep it fresh but natural.

Liquid quotes are more drinkable. Make your writing as fluid as possible, so people can chug it in one tasty gulp.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

Respect and love your readers. Write for the reader.

People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They can read and write, they can afford any of the instruments of book writing...

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at...

By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a...

Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body...

Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.

Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it’s all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building...

Someone asked me, ‘How do you write a book?’ I said, ‘I live with a pen in one hand.

I know it’s difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.

Good writing just isn’t that common.

Write what you want to write and would like to read, not for any invisible audience. Your readers will find you.

Writing is an adventure. There is no way to know where it will take you, and what you will find. You could find success. You could find fans. Or, best of all, you could find...

It’s not pain. It’s raw material.

I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t...

Theoretically there’s no reason one should get [writer’s block], if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ought to feel deeply guilty about nor something one ought to be inordinately...

By writing, we partake in something greater than ourselves. Pick up pen and paper or take a seat at your computer today and create something of beauty.

Writers are born, not created.

You have to be in your middle thirties before you have anything worth saying.

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

To write, live.

‎Never say you can’t be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.

To be a writer, you must write. To be a published writer you must finish what you write and then get what you’ve written in front of the outside world.

Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.

Every writer in the history of the world has been afraid to put words on the page. But we only remember those who overcame that fear.

Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.

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

…authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer…

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

People say to write about what you know. I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don’t know anything. So write about something you don’t know. And don’t be scared,...

It’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last...

it’s been my experience that most writers don’t talk about their craft–they just do it

Beware of advice—even this.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

I cannot tell you how important fresh, crisp writing is for an aspiring writer. Plot is great. The overall concept is super important. But the writing is what sells your work. It all boils down...

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips...

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

The power of writing supernaturally set things into motion.

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

Write to evolve and you’ll evolve to write.

When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters...