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

(In reply to the question, ‘Would you like some suggestions for a plot for your next book?’)There are three problems with getting plot suggestions from other people. The first is that ideas are the easy...

If you’re a writer, write. And always strive for excellence.

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.

Write to evolve and you’ll evolve to write.

Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up...

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.

Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

we write every day, we fight every day, we think and scheme and dream a little dream every day. manuscripts pile up in the kitchen sink, run-on sentences dangle around our necks. we plant purple...

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

Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the...

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: … The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don’t know what you’re thinking...

If you were to stare at this box of matches, you could extract entire worlds out of it. If you search for tastes in a book, you will certainly find them because it was said:...

A daily written thankful gratitude is a heavenly blessing.

Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.

I’m proud to be a writer. I’m doing the job all my heroes did.

We will need to find people who will provide a safe writing space for us, where criticism comes late and love and delight come early.—from Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a...

I’m not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM.

Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.

Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better...

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

Writing starts with living.

Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. It’s the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is...

If the novel is dead, I’m a necrophiliac.

Success does not bring happiness. Success brings success.

When I write, I write obsessively. I try to pace myself, but some fires are too hot to put out.

Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.

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 . ....

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

culture” – and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species. ~ Through the local or regional, through our individual voices, we work to create art that...

I want to question societal norms, encourage people to think in new ways.

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

Writing is a lonely business, which if allowed publicity and socializing it might deteriorate. Supportive people understand the need of a writer to withdraw to the solitude of oneself.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

I’ve never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke...

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

One hasn’t become a writer until one has distilled writing intoa habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession.Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic,physiological and psychological...

The art of writing is the manipulation of words to ease the mind and free the imagination

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer’s block.

I think… the most brilliant thing about being a writer,is that if you don’t like the way the world is, you can create your own.

There’s a difference between the ‘art’ of writing and the ‘craft’ of writing. Art is subjective, its beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but craft is objective. There is a right way and...

Authors are sick people.

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying...

You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that — it’s all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be...

I see there is a good deal of grandiloquence in my book — my friends and foes have told me. I think it must be true, for there is a good deal of grandiloquence in...

It is the storyteller’s task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

You can be a good painter if you study Cézanne’s vision. Whoever dares to copy Van Gogh falls inevitably into the hell of imitators. For this painter didn’t care about masterpieces, or even good paintings…...

Writers are like supreme beings. We can create worlds in a matter of days and we can destroy them just as fast.