Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one’s arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.

You may be able to write a novel, you may not. You will never know until you have worked very hard indeed and written at least part of it. You will never really know until...

Why I write music? Because it hurts not to.

Here’s what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full...

Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

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.

Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway.Brianna: But it’s not – it’s a different kind of truth – it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn’t it?

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...

He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins.

To fly/steal is woman’s gesture, to steal into language to make it fly.

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…...

When you are writing you’re creating beauty for mind.

I’ve allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful...

Story should be a descent — the feeling that there is an intense gravity to the narrative that draws you down, down, down.

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You...

I am a lifelong lover of form–content interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of...

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a...

She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.

Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.

With our writings, we can right the world.

Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the...

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card – the kind that has a satin ribbon on...

For every laugh, there should be a tear.

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.

Chapter 1.He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion…no, make that: he – he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yeah. To him, no matter what the season was, this was...

I’m engaged in the dance of the ages and the search for a song to go with it. Though Templeton’s A Veritable Smorgasbord is a well-deserving classic, it’s a stanza too short for my morphing...

Words are clothes that thoughts wear

You’ll drown in my love story, if I ever write it using a fountain pen.

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories

You are either born a writer or you are not.

If I could just capture each memory in a bottle the maybe you people would understand how much I’ve suffered, how much I’ve been through, but most importantly how far I have come.

Sometimes I’ll read a book and feel it was written just for me. Then I’ll flip the book over to look at the cover to see who wrote it, only to discover that it feels...

I’ve always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.” – Associated Press interview, 12-7-11

My writing doesn’t improve if you think it’s great, and it doesn’t lessen if you think it sucks. Likewise, you not showing me love doesn’t mean mine for you has to be invisible. The two...

In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as...

You know, it’s a funny thing about writers. Most people don’t stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago–they don’t expect to...

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It’s hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a...

Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it’s built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer...

Too many irons, not enough fire.

Which story do you want to hear my child?”he picked him up and made him sit on his lap.”Tell us the story of that fairy who lived in a house of wafers,had a garden of...