Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t. …If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

Write a little. Read a little. Dick around on the internet. Post something to Pinterest or Facebook. Text a friend. Write some more. Curse it because it’s shit. Write some more. Repeat.

What is a writer?A writer is a magician who can create a masterpiece With a wave of a pencilA writer has the key to a new worldCapturing readers and taking them on a roller coaster...

It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled...

Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a...

You’ll have days of complete lack of faith in your abilities. But you have to keep coming back. That’s when you know you’re a writer – when you take the failures and appear at the...

I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.

The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false...

Waandishi wanapaswa kuwa wadadisi, kama paka, ijapokuwa udadisi ni hatari.

How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.

I couldn’t admit to any of the boys I hung out with that I wanted to fuck ’em, so my erotic life was in my imagination and in the body.

Darling, in this family we don’t call anyone a novelist who has not written more books than Jane Austen.

Lost in New York City. Not that I don’t know where I am, but rather perplexed as to where I am going.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it

I write because I cannot NOT write.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don’t think anyone could havemade me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

By writing, we partake in something greater than ourselves. Pick up pen and paper or take a seat at your computer today and create something of beauty.

When a writer tries to explain too much, he’s out of time before he begins.

The characters tell their story – I am merely the tool used to record it

Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another’s work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our...

Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to ‘lay it on’ in the telling. Aim for...

We all know writing is a reclusive, lonely endeavour. It just is. But nobody writes alone.

Poetry is the wailing of a broken heart―the etched sorrows of despairing souls. These artful words are an exclamation in rare colors expressed noiselessly on parchment. Poetry is the unheard cry of a budding flower,...

My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because...

Let the letters clash forming an invisible meaning of a sunny night, freezing chimney, and silent screams. When words betray you, hold on to your imagination.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

Some build their castles ‘mid thunderbolts and fireworks. My worlds take shape in silence.

I want to drown in all the ink used to write positive things about my clone and how great he is.

In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity–I say that to...

Step back and scrutinize your work, to delve deep into the meaning behind the words, it will get both easier in some ways and harder in others. Either way, you need to practice everyday. You...

Pencil. Paper. Forget the world.

Love is the best drug, bar none.

Someone described a writer’s world as tormented, and I had to laugh. A tormented writer? I personally wouldn’t have put those two words together. Emotions have the power to torment a soul, yes, I agree...

Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

I want to write the Boston Marathon of run-on sentences. And since it’ll be so long, I’ll replace all the commas with the word Gatorade, to help push people through it.

Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.

So! You don’t love me!” and bucks me off, sends me flying to the hyenas, if ever the paper ladder that I climb so easily to go pick stars for Promethea—at the very instant that...

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very...

A writer must be a lifelong reader to be good. And if you want to be a great writer, I’d suggest trying to live a long life by reading the ingredients of the foods you...

Writing is a 24/7 job. You live it, eat it, breathe it… the pay can be pretty lousy, but you do it happily, because you love it!!! That, and from the day you started writing...

Careful, Mr. Earl,” Parker started to say, but it was too late.The teacher screeched before lurching against the desk. He went down quickly, his feet vanishing into the desk last.

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

Wilds whisper, yet I long for their roar.

If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian...

A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.

If I could make money making armpit farts, I would. But since I can’t, I teach. And write.

A blanket would be a great surface to print my new book on, so you could read it in bed while you’re having boring, obligatory sex with your spouse, who’s as dry and exciting as...