The only difference between writers and people who don’t write is that writers aren’t afraid to display their demons.

You’re a loner in body, mind, and soul. A writer who spends a day of solitude in the office is plagued by a mind that travels with the body. The work never stops.

But I did not want to be good. I wanted to be a writer.

Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.

Oh, readers. If only you knew what we’ve gone through for you.

Writing is the act of discovery.

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet’s path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I’d choose to be...

You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have...

for the work.” Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway.

Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement.

If I propose to myself and myself says yes, I get to have the cake, right? I love me, so I’m thinking 12 tiers.

Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only...

The highest kind of writing—which must not be confused withthe most ambitious kind…belongs to the realm of grace. Talent ispart of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws,absolutely. But finding the subject and...

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop…suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

To prepare to write, I don’t surround myself with books. I surround myself with feelings.

Nothing is louder than silence.

A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.

Writing is like having sex. The people who never shut up about doing it are usually the ones who don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

…the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.

Live first, write second.

Write to evolve and you’ll evolve to write.

Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry...

Some words may make you happy, some may make you said. Maybe some will make you angry. What I hope. . . what I hope is that something will whisper in your ear.

I think writing is like ministry. You get this call and you run before accepting it. If you run right to it, there’s a good chance you were not called.

I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.

Write, what you feel about. Feel, what you have written about.

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.

Every day we live, we are writing our own secret book.

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.

From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: “There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the...

In order to write about life first you must live it.

It isn’t the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort.

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....

I’m working on my own life story. I don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart. If you’d wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything...

Every moment offers a great opportunity to write.

Sometimes you have to go a little crazy before you can find sanity. I think I’m close.

Writers are born, not created.

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world.

We all have a place within us, that would like to rewrite the way our life was written out for us….That’s why people want to become authors.

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.

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...