Receiving very little or no feedback from my writing I really don’t know if people like it or if they are actually reading any of my work for that matter. Still I will continue to...

I already knew the next story that I was going to rewrite from the beginning. Mine.

Pay attention, and use your imagination.

Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write...

In The End The Words Are The All And The Nothing.

Drama copies life in there being a sense of waiting, of a promise never fulfilled.

May the ink of your thoughts never dry.

Writing is like a religion to those who don’t practise, an act of faith for those who do.

May my mind be clear and my heart pure.

Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.

Don’t say you’re a writer if you’re not writing. Even if you’re writing, don’t call yourself a writer. Say instead, ‘I write.’ It’s the verb that’s important, not the noun.

Be Visionary …

I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man,Or the man who’s half a boy.

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and...

When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.

It’s all mine, it’s all sacred.

Nothing in the world is like this-a bright white page withpale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencilthe soft hush of itmoving finallyone dayinto letters.

I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?

Fiction gives us a reach into the lives of individuals that would otherwise be but a closed door. If we are gifted with a desire to tell tales, then we should tell them . ....

Life is a book. There are many pages to be written.

The secret of being a successful writer is–write. Every writer deserves that chance.

I just inhaled kimchi ramen. Nose on fire. Next chapter may be obscured by tears.

No matter how many books I write, I will eventually get to fiction. That is where I’m going.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and...

Confession: I don’t want to be one of my characters. I’m mean to them sometimes. Really mean.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

To ask how I feel about writing is to ask how I feel about breathing.

It’s like I get into a roller coaster, and sit there while it goes up and down and upside down and sometimes I get thrown out and I hit my head, but I crawl back...

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

Life baffles me most days. Maybe that’s why I write. To try and make sense of it all.

To say that a writer’s hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it’s like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer’s build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The...

To get over artist’s block, make shitty art.

Meggie Folchart: Having writer’s block? Maybe I can help.Fenoglio: Oh yes, that’s right. You want to be a writer, don’t you?Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it’s a bad thing.Fenoglio: Oh no, it’s just...

Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label — to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must...

He cut away the insignificant and incidental. Those bits were tossedaway from the juicy core pieces. He slid the excess tissue and tendons away and reorganized the good bits on his plate. Those pieces were...

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s...

When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach.

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

Do whatever you have to do, avoid whatever you need to avoid, protect yourself however you need to protect yourself in order to stay on course, write, send the work out, write more, send out...

Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.

The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words. Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective...

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel...

All the best writers take risks, offend people often and say fuck you to the critics.

It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it’s difficult and never forget the...

Lost in New York City. Not that I don’t know where I am, but rather perplexed as to where I am going.

If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.

So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing…. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the...

As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs…The way...