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

Bulldogs are wonderful creatures to include in books. Besides their adorable bulldogishness, they provide the writer with a rare chance to use forms of the verb “snuffle.

To write is to stand at the edge of a bottomless well, unafraid of falling in.

Life is too short to dwell in the negativity all the time.

When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. . . I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully...

I write because I have to; because I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands if I didn’t.

When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, “You can do this. You’ve got what it takes.” The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

Nothing makes you feel smaller than New York City…

I believe that we don’t choose our stories,” she began, leaning forward. “Our stories choose us.” She paused and took a sip of water. Her hand, I noticed was steady.. “And if we don’t tell...

What I don’t get about “traditional publishing” is that an author creates a work that they think is good enough to be published. They then have to spend their valuable time begging others to exploit...

I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try...

You may be a serious writer if ….10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to...

Write a little. Read a little. Dick around on the internet. Post something to Pinterest or Facebook. Text a friend. Write some more. Curse it because it’s shit. Write some more. Repeat.

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.

There has to be something other than keeping busy that gives human life value, because our society so often functions as if ‘productivity’ and/or ‘usefulness’ are the measures of human value, and — particularly for...

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, “I kill people.” This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from...

For me, writing was the only way out.

Motivation is my problem: I’m almost too motivated. I lie awake thinking how Kris would dress for the occasion or why Benjamin would be upset in the field or how the hell Brianna will manage...

An author is like an incompetent bricklayer – doesn’t use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop.

Journalism, to me, is just another drug – a free ride to scenes I’d probably miss if I stayed straight. But I’m neither a chemist nor an editor; all I do is take the pill...

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an...

Everything is research.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

I have a handful of prayers that I pray all the time… One is that God will put my books into the right hands at the right times. I’ve prayed this prayer thousands of times,...

Writing starts with living.

Don’t ask for advice too much. Go with you, as gritty as that might be at times.

A writer will always be a writer. It’s not a choice, it’s a destiny.

A direct relationship exists between the caliber of the writing you read and the caliber of the writing you make.

I’ve never yet run out of ideas what to write about… only out of time to write it in.

In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical centre of the novel. By middle of the...

However, just like any line of work, writing is a negotiation, and creative control is as elusive as financial stability. I discovered that writing could be like cleaning carpets or working in a factory: just...

PhD, MFA, self-taught—the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Every book contains a secret – even the writer doesn’t always know what it is.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see –...

Writing is transcendental. It is a form of expression, a form of art that you can take anywhere. That you can do anywhere. It poses the deepest questions in the universe. It generates emotion. It...

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn’t...

It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if...

To all you writers, artists, musicians, creative types who want to give up: It’s okay to walk away for a bit. Get your second wind. But your writing, art, music will be there, lurking over...

Language is a door. Words en-trance and are an entrance; they draw you in. When you read, the book you cradle disappears and the tales within unfold in your mind. Writing is a shelter of...

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

So here I am writing my zombie story and my lead character decides to betray me.

I’ve written about 2,000 short stories; I’ve only published 300 and I feel I’m still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he...

There are three certainties in a writer’s life: death, taxes, and rejection letters.

The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the...

I wanted to do it once. Be a writer. Now I’m near 70, and the only thing I have to show for it is dictionary entries. Don’t get me wrong — I’m incredibly proud of...