Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.

Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original....

The best kind of praise is intelligent praise.

Every book I’ve read appears in my writing.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader’s heart.

Don’t get it right, get it written.

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don’t make for good biographies.

Write what should not be forgotten.

I’ve never heard a writer feel that way about a device with a screen. Oh sure, they’re functional, practical. We would be lost without them. But just as we need to feel our feet on...

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But...

There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.

The best writing is when one writes from the soul

I’m writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

…it’s good to know wave and particle alpha code, but more than that, the writer must go to the heart of life …

The difference between wanting to write and having written is one year of hard, relentless labour. It’s a bridge you have to build all by yourself, all alone, all through the night, while the world...

Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence; many epic tales are pretty much epic crap.

You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New...

When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.

We should be told: Write fast, write close to the bone, write for ten hours straight until you’re not thinking in words anymore, but in colors, in smells, in waves of memory. Right what you...

The key to high concept is that fresh twist. Make it a big one. Wow your reader. Force her to gasp when she comes to that part in your story.

Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

Write drunk; edit sober.

Not everyone is fodder for books,” said Rosalind.

It’s basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn’t and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is...

Writing starts with living.—Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only...

Whenever I listen to an artist or an art historian I’m struck by how much they see and how much they know–and how much I don’t.Good art writing should therefore do at least two things....