Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let...

Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.

To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you’re completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there’s no point to continue.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which...

Hard core authors are determined about their craft, and they know that building a brand entails hard work. They eat, breathe and live their writing.:

You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you’re not. That’d be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open...

There’s a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow...

Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in...

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.

Any fool can write, we start learning it at school at the age of three….

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job!

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy – how sad that I could not reinvent the...

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

A writer is merely a reader that had the guts to be read, and, heard.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

A first-rate story is easily killed by second-rate design.

Writer speaks a stench.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to...

I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself...

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage...

Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprose.

When talented people write badly, it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they’re driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people...

This is our skin and nobody has the right to crumple us like a paper only to find another skin to write on, and then another, ruining people like they’re pages, like they are somehow...

Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.

You just don’t know writers. They’ll use anything, anybody. They’ll eat their young.

Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You’d better find out if you’re any good at it before you start charging for it.

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

I’m an aspiring writer.’ I hate that phrase. You’re either a writer or you’re not.

If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn’t fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy...

I wrote this about you, about our love, our story. And I feel so damn lucky that others in this world, strangers in other parts, can steal a piece of what we have and feel...

Building your “dream life” is filled with things that can feel like the opposite of a dream:MistakesDelaysStarting overFailureThe building part is actually more of a rebuilding that is a continual process. The building is not...

People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that’s not true. I write for me. I publish for money.

I want to gather up all the ink cartridges in the universe, because somewhere, mixed in with all that ink, is the next great American novel. And I’d love nothing more than to drink it.

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision...

I am, apparently, of that rare breed that likes to write. The demands of a chapter pull me from bed in the morning, and regardless of how well I think I know the day’s road...

Editors are licensed to be curious.

Many women arrange their lives around the people they love. Unfortunately, that arrangement takes up most of our days.

In a way, literature is true than life,’ he said to himself. ‘On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you...

The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things.

Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could...

The only way you’ll find out if you “have it in you” is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your “limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude” is to...

If you’re not creating, you’re disintegrating.

A book gets rejected because it’s not ready to be published.

There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.” Professor Piper

If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good

The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

Writers more interested in literature than the truth ensure that they never come out with either thing — one reason that the word literature today sounds so fake, as if you were to insist on saying cuisine...