And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose….it made the stories look on the surface like ‘a...

Edinburgh is alive with words.

Having read several prize-winning novels, Fancy was confident that she now knew the recipe: 1. Write a simple narrative. 2. Make a long list. 3. Scatter the contents of your list throughout your narrative.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.

We are doing the most important possible work in the world when we open the door and reveal our creative nature. It is the work of the Universe itself.

Just write. That’s my only tip. And read. I guess that’s two.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.

All European writers are ‘slaves of their baptism,’ if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition or they fight...

TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO MAKE ART.

Write them all down. The mistakes and the blessings and the places you cracked in two. Write the prayers and the tantrums. The sacred and the profane. The open roads and the closed doors. Nothing...

I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.

We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else’s sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your...

If writing is your passion, write and don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise. You don’t need to quit your day job to do it. Create a realistic schedule and stick with it.

Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And...

Ada yang mengatakan saya ini gila menulis. Ini mendekati benar, karena kalau tidak menulis saya pastilah gila, dan karena gila makanya saya menulis.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

One writes primarily to free oneself from oneself.

After a long while he sat upright with great effort, exhaled a sigh and reached for a clean sheet of lined paper, smoothing it out on the desk. He unscrewed the lid of his fountain...

Publication is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing the book is only the start.

It’s my experience that you first feel the impulse to write in your chest. It’s like falling in love, only more so. It feels like something criminal. It feels like unspeakably wild sex. So, think:...

‎”It almost felt like the dolphin of my heart’s desire playing in the ocean of my life.” – on writing

Maybe those sailors will write bad poems, but the same men would have kept dull diaries, too. The problem has to do not with the evidence but with the witness. The point is not the...

To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to...

One ventures, commits one’s self, and if readers are not pleased, one can perhaps please one’s self and earn that slender right to persevere.

Writing is hard work, and if anything’s true about the process, it’s that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What’s less romantic than staring alone...

Start with a word. A word leads to a sentence, which leads to a paragraph, which leads to a chapter, which leads to a manuscript, which leads to a book….. just start with a word!

I chose to be a writer no more than I chose to be female.

It’s a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so...

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next...

Writers are like actors too. For every story we create, we must get under the skin of the characters and role play with our writing.

If it pleases you and you can write at all, it’s gonna please somebody else.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

Bloodchild” is my pregnant man story.

If the word doesn’t exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn’t exist.

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

What are you burning?” On a glance, just some papers.”I write in a journal.” He spoke below his breath, so that his words weren’t quite for me. “Because I like to see everything written down....

The reason writers are such fragile beings, Marcus, is that they suffer from two sorts of emotional pain, which is twice as much as a normal human being: the heartache of love and the heartache...

if you think they didn’t go crazy in tiny rooms just like you’re doing now without women without food without hope then you’re not ready.

Poetry is not for profit. Poetry is for Posterity.

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 don’t write to chase away my demons ~I wield my pen as a weapon…calling those bastards to war!

Every writer should know their target. Aim for the heart ~ hit that and all which follows is sheer ecstasy.

Toby: All right. It couldn’t have gone far, right?Sam: No.Toby: Somewhere in this building…is our talent.

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?