Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue–the clue–lies there. I’m always ferreting out elliptical points, odd angles. What I write doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There is fun and...

You don’t teach a person how to write as much as you teach that person how to survive the writing process.

I usually get the title for a book first, and I type it up immediately. I sit there and look at it and admire it, and I think to myself, I just need four thousand...

(Live + Think) x Different = Write Different

A writer who’s afraid to express their opinions is not a writer – they’re just a person with a pen.

Life baffles me most days. Maybe that’s why I write. To try and make sense of it all.

I cannot tell you how important fresh, crisp writing is for an aspiring writer. Plot is great. The overall concept is super important. But the writing is what sells your work. It all boils down...

Let’s have lunch.

As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just that as I...

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost...

Do what you love…

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written

…writing with ferocity is a gift, provided that ferocity is a monomaniacal devotion to pursuing the truth …

Steven wrote to me today, saying, ‘Don’t you feel like sticking your head out of the window and yelling, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!!!”‘ Yes, absolutely. Solidarity. Fear is always the same. Different worries...

When I sleep tonight I dream of what I will imagine tomorrow.

I write to escape. I haven’t managed it yet, but I’m working on it

I am a perfectionist in spirit

To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: ‘Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write....

… The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper,...

Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.

The Messiah of Stockholm.” It takes place in Stockholm. I’d better say no more, or the Muse will wipe it out.

Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

Then I started to think in Lipp’s about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d’Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley...

Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer —not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, ‘You only grow by coming to...

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Many a good story has been found in the bottom of a decent Rioja.

A writer’s life is half ambition and half anxiety, and there has to be both. It is no good writing a novel and feeling fine, and it is no good writing a whole novel feeling...

Rather than feeling that every moment you’ve got to exert this enormous control, you can take the attitude that your job as a writer is not to control everything, but to set things in motion.

You cannot write the pages you love without writing the pages you hate. Nothing that you write is pointless, useless, or unnecessary. The product requires the process. The good days may be more enjoyable, but...

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it’s flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I began a new story. My characters are...

Writing is easy. Saying something that would make a difference is the task.

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

I hate writing, I love having written.

Je choisis des mots simples et concrets… J’essaie de faire des phrases courtes et j’évite les inversions autant que possible. Je ne mets pas un mot très bref à côté d’un mot de plusieurs syllables…...

I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.

Bagiku, sehari tanpa menulis adalah sehari hilang, terbuang.

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

Writing poetry is supernatural. Or, it should be.

Don’t worry about what you’re writing or whether it’s good or even whether it makes sense.

…if you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat – creativity is a rugged terrain…

Nothing listens as well as a blank page.

Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.

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

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and...

There are students that are scattered, who need to see something through to the finish, but I would say there are possibly more who do not entertain the leaps of the mind that need to...

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled...

I like to play around with my nightmares. Whenever I have a bad dream – something strange and unnerving – I write it down, sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone around me...

I have written until I fell asleep with my computer on my lap. That can’t be normal.

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to...