Caught red-handed for exclamation abuse.

I became a physicist to understand the world, then I became a writer to try and change it.

Los escritores compensan la falta de estímulo escribiendo para el porvenir, o mejor, para esa forma cálida del porvenir que es el reconocimiento de unos cuantos, no necesariamente amigos.

Next to motherhood, I personally believe that being an author is the best job in the world.

Another drink, another sentence, and the writing continues on. . . .

You want to get your book to press. You rush it through. Revision number twenty—done. Do you really need twenty more? Yes. A half-baked book is a half-birthed child. It aborts, is put on life...

But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, “Well, now it’s writing time...

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.

Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.

Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky...

Creating characters is easy. It’s getting them to behave that’s the problem.

Indie publishing lets me feed my inner control freak.

you once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation...

They say everything that can be written has been written. I say we are just getting started.

So what do you do when you are stuck?The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I...

The Bible should be taught in schools – in English, with all the other fiction.

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

Don’t think too much. There’ll be time to think later. Analysis won’t help. You’re chiseling now. You’re passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There’s something there. It isn’t...

For me, at least, fiction is the only way i can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.

Listening to Led Zeppelin’s Heartbreaker while reading your own book, sipping a beer after midnight, is a satisfying feeling…however fleeting.

The only man she ever loved. And hated.

Without a doubt the two best words in the English language are The End

Your first written sentence is the foundation of all of your dreams.

Time to turn some phrases and place them on these here pages.

George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and...

Writing only leads to more writing.

I’m sorry if…I get too personal, if I make you uncomfortable, but writing is like one of the seven deadly sins, like Sharing on Mr. Rogers, and once you get the bug you’re trapped in...

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...

Two things consistently bring me pleasure: hot sweet tea and writing. Which is not to say that either are particularly good for me…I use entirely too much sugar and so far don’t find sucralose to...

When people say, ‘you’re so young to be a writer,’ I always reply, ‘I started young because I’ve got a lot to write.

This is a little secret that all writers share: We have two lives; the one we live on Earth and the one we live in our books.

This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so...

As an outsider I was free to pick my own literary traditions, to build my own system of literary values.

Never stop learning and never give up!

Success does not bring happiness. Success brings success.

That night I looked Stephanie [Burt] up online and started reading more about her work…I kept encountering a striking factoid…: she’s often cited as the most influential poetry critic of her generation. And she’s openly...

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

America takes her writers too seriously.

Tattoos are a permanent commitment of passion

We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know...

sometimes i wake upin the middleof the nightand findpoetry splatteredall over my bed.

People should think that being a writer is cool. Even if you’re just a starving writer. Besides, most great writers were starving at one point or another. It comes with the title.

Writing is the great invention of the world.

Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn’t given the chance to live because I don’t have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to...

One day, I decided I was going to write books forever.

I still love the sound of breaking,the tearing of the page

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.

The privilege is not writing a novel, it’s to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.

I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow. I read too much and write too little,...