Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am...

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s really a stupid thing to want to do.

Writing my blog has saved me thousands on therapy.

You are not responsible for the reader, you’re only responsible for what you are writing.

Tears are words that need to be written.

I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it’s been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.

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...

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...

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.

You’ll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one.

I sat down and tried to write a story.”Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight.”That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just...

I can read lips. Especially if they have words tattooed on them.

On his office wall he had a note to himself: ‘Money is necessary–but it isn’t too important.’ Money meant for him to keep on writing and to go his own way.

The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you’re going to see it blink black. That’s the moment to start writing.

I’m supposed to a man who never blows his composureA boy trapped in a war, forced to be a soliderThe weight of the world just put on top of my shouldersBut if there’s one thing...

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

Let All Your Life’s Experiences Lead To More Writing & Encourage More Reading..!

It’s easier to start writing if you have something to write about, rather than staring at a blank screen thinking about nothing because you’re trying to think about everything. Try writing about love. I’ve proven...

I was reading, absorbed in an assault on K2 by a team of Japanese mountaineers, my lungs constricting in the thin burning air, the deadly sting of wind-lashed ice in my face, when the record...

Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: ‘Things are this way. You can’t change it’ – don’t believe a word.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.

In the course of this story, and very soon now, it will be necessary to make some disclosures about Mr. Krupper of a nature too coarse to be dealt with very directly in a work...

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person.

My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter.

A short story is a different thing all together – a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you’ll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

Insofar as craft and poetics in a poem have a politics, I wanted to avoid that brittle enjambed-prose-sentence-lyric verse, where you have standard sentences snapped off and scattered decoratively across the page (which I might...

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author’s script almost without...

You played it with great seriousness. And it is not such an uncommon game. Do you know Ibsen’s poem — To live it to do battle with trolls in the vaults of the heart and...

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and...

There’s something terribly weird about the standard fantasy setting–not least of which the fact the phrase “standard fantasy setting” can be uttered without irony.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to...

But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work?” “I’ll make time,” I promised. “The house will not...

I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will...

Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen.

I don’t think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

It’s a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to...

Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying, my editor at the time Terri Windling and I sat down to figure out what to call what...

But then why do we write if not to tackle the fears that others look to us to conquer?

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

I like working among ‘creative clutter’. It gives me a sense of activity and achievement.

When you’re a student of poetry, you’re lucky if you don’t realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.

I really think that writing about sex is writing about the mind.