People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

Too many irons, not enough fire.

I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do.

I had a good classical education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind; that was the capital with which I faced the world […] I reflected, then, on my want of prospects, and...

I realized I was officially a professional writer when all my plans began with “drink coffee” and ended with “take a nap.

The most lies we will ever tell in our lives will be to ourselves.

Occupation: WriterOccupational Hazard: Carpel tunnelSolution: Wrist guards to bed or my hands do all the sleeping Perspective: I’ve decided my wrist guards have turned me into a Ninja Superhero that hides in the shadows

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.

What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under...

A 15-minute gap in your day is plenty of time to write and read, but not if you check your email first.

Writing is a bit like going on a diet; you should either tell everyone or no one.

The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was...

Some days being a writer consists of telling yourself you aren’t insane, your characters are.

Somebody told me I’m a writer. I believed them. Now I regret it.

[Writing about themselves] gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a...

Rejection is part of the game. Or rather, rejection is part of the profession. A profession which at times can feel like a game.

Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.

Writing is like breathing underwater. It’s really hard to do unless you can imagine yourself a nice set of gills.

I’ve probably put my 10,000 hours into writing, but I believe writing well is also greatly influenced by certain intangibles like mood and inspiration.

Lyrics paved my teenage route to loving words. I take those passionate mini-stories with me everywhere.

I live, love and loathe my characters. They stole my mind. They stole my heart.

A writing day is like any other day. Except I live in my pajamas, I forget to eat, and I suddenly look up, wondering when day turned into night.

When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is...

I read the novel I had been writing for several months with an odd sense that it was the work of a stranger. I usually work in the dead hours of night and surprising the...

I remember when I first began writing, I would spend maybe five or six hours on perhaps two paragraphs, and at the end of the day, not only were the paragraphs pretty terrible but I...

I write because, as wonderful as life is – and it is truly wonderful – it isn’t enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write.

Being blind is the worst possible thing and asking me to read and write no more is torture.

If everyone could be a successful and rich author, there would be no point in working so hard. Where is the fun in that?

…you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you’ve sold your first book.

Authors always feel in danger of being abandoned by loved ones. This is a potent fear. Yet it’s as inevitable as writer’s cramp when we presume to write words for others to read.

What Writing Is: Telepathy, of course.

Writers are a superior breed. No one else can face so much rejection and still thrive.

When sitting in an armchair isn’t enough… I write. What I mean is that when it no longer suffices to sit and dream about travelling to other times, other places, I write about them instead....

I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.

Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.

Every day I must prove to myself I am a writer. The knowledge goes away in my sleep. What I wrote yesterday was paltry, meager, so flawed it is barely anything. Or, if it is...

Books are like horcruxes–without all the evil–because a piece of the author goes into each one.

Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.

In the story of life, the prologue and epilogue are written by God. Yet the plot has been given to us; therefore we should write the best prose we can.

Writing Tip:Don’t let the “writing rules” bog you down when you’re writing the first draft; they don’t matter when you’re writing the story, only when you’re editing the story.

There are authors who write to communicate, there are authors who write to impress themselves.

The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.

I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be...

If You Can Stand It, Play the Long Game . . .What I mean here is that you have to remain committed to the ultimate goal, which isn’t to win the immediate approval of the...

I love my career. It is a career. A difficult one that takes many hours and total dedication to my craft. It is also what I was born to do–tell stories and entertain.

I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling … I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt...

Research” is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING

Let your characters lead when you’re dancing together.

Sometimes we dream of things that we’ve always wanted–of things that we have been searching for our whole lives without knowing it…and other times we wake up and know what we have to do. I...