I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people,...

If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice...

Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don’t mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they...

Writing is like daydreaming through your fingers.

There’s no savior here. Especially not at 1:15 a.m.

Henry’s recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while...

When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around...

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:Be not the first by whom the new are tried,Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Which is him?” The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

…we have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It’s the opposite to living our lives episodically,...

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

Most of the people I worked with in my old job were pretty cool. We used to go out drinking after lights out and the less pleasant members of staff would be the topic of...

You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn’t read your...

Every book contains a secret – even the writer doesn’t always know what it is.

I’m merely dying to be remembered for simply writing about my living memories

If there’s a single idea I emphasize when people ask about writing, it’s that there’s no right way to produce a book. But I do think that whatever you do, you should do regularly, whether...

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all...

So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. “This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends.” He stared at the paintings for...

I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing...

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don’t make for good biographies.

Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

How often have the greatest thoughts and ideas come to light during conversations with the family over the evening dinner?

Y algo golpeaba en mi alma, fiebre o alas perdidas, y me fui haciendo solo, descifrando aquella quemadura y escribí la primera línea vaga, vaga, sin cuerpo, pura, tontería pura sabiduría del que no sabe...

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about ‘petty personal problems’ was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one’s...

If you’re a writer, the answer to everything is yes.

When people talk about poetry as a project, they suggest that the road through a poem is a single line. When really the road through a poem is a series of lines, like a constellation,...

Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.

The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: “Do not...

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise...

this is the weakness of most ‘edifying’ or ‘propaganda’ literature. There is no diversity…You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

Writing poetry is a state of free float

I never met a word I didn’t love

There is such a place as fairyland – but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget...

Waandishi ni wadadisi.

yes, writing is mostly a dream, but angels visit in dreams

The beauty of writing is imagining new endings to a time of darkness, like burning off a morning fog with the heat and clarity of the sun.

Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society.

Q: Best part about being a musical theatre book writer?A: Explaining what that is.

You wanted to show everyone you could write about the black heart of a killer. And all the while pretending you don’t even have your own dark desires.

To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me–the sole ground on which I...

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

I often think publishing a book is like doing a poo. Once it’s ready for the world, you have to relinquish that control and let nature take its course. A few will be impressed by...

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Look deeper through the telescopeand do not be afraid when the starscollide towards the darkness,because sometimes the most beautifulthings begin in chaos.

For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave...

A writer who’s a pro can take on almost any assignment, but if he or she doesn’t much care about the subject, I try to dissuade the writer, as in that case the book can...

My writing, it’s my way of making sense of everything. My way to feel whole. May I never be complete and may I never feel content – please, let me always have the need, always...

I am an Author a person who plays with words so they can dance in the minds of others

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a...