What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.

I could write about how I feel when I sing, write and create something from heartbreak, sorrow, sadness or just simply nothingness. How nothingness can become the most beautiful, unexplainable feeling that makes you forget...

If the story you’re telling, is the story you’re telling, you’re in deep shit.

Will you pipe down for a minute? Naturally she was dead since I work at a cemetery. Her face struck a chord though. So, I rummaged around in the old Rory memory bank, and Emily...

Start the next one today.

Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the...

Why certainly, words possess power. They do! But releasing their magic requires combining and arranging those words in the right order.

The best fame is a writer’s fame. It’s enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.

Does it matter that people and thingsHave words,Have names?If not,Why read any book?A litany of useless lettersDetached from bone, muscle.Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,PersonReal?

Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die. ~J.R. Ward

WILDE: Oh — Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can’t be helped. The betrayal of one’s friends is a bagatelle in the stakes...

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

A Gift for YouI send you…A cottage retreat on a hill in Ireland. This cottage is filled with fresh flowers, art supplies, and a double-wide chaise lounge in front of a wood-burning fireplace. There is...

For me, art that’s alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

You say great artists sell their souls for their art?””Maybe,” she ventured.”That’s true, I suppose. If you’re doing it right, anyway. I’ve probably sold mine. Jack’s certainly sold his. And you, I imagine.””I have not!”...

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to...

The perfect song neither ends nor begins. It is always playing. Remember to stop and listen.

Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.

The panther that has stalked yousince you were a childis old now. No longer wild,and tired of guarding the treasureyou yourself left behind – blind and deaf, she will give it all to youif you...

And you can glance out the window for a moment, distracted by the sound of small kids playing a made-up game in a neighbor’s yard, some kind of kickball maybe, and they speak in your...

I’m telling you, writing the book is easy. The after part will break your back. Not to mention your heart.

The flashing black line on an empty Word document reminds me that my life is counting down second by second, and that if I don’t write I’ll have wasted my time here on earth.

You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may...

To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don’t practice it.

I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when I’m working on a story, I’ll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they’ve taken...

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely...

My purpose of writing is to express my love for you,no matter, who you are, where you live or whatever you do.

You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself....

Your flesh is not a reflection of your soul. So when you look in the mirror, remember that your light outshines your flaws.

Don’t make the editor’s decision for her by not submitting.

Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the...

It’s neither and it’s both. That’s the perfect kind of art. Labels only detract from the artist’s intention.

A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker’s mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I’ll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won’t...

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.

My definition of dictionary can’t be found in the dictionary. Dictionary—A linguistic prison, confining words to well-defined cells, with little chance of parole.

I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.

Samuel Clemens.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

All thoughts, secret or spoken, belong in a coffee table book written in Braille, so you can really feel the emotions.

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

This book has nothing to do with cats. Or mice. Or self-motivation. This book is 100% 50% finished. But don’t worry, I finished the good half. But don’t be mistaken—the good half isn’t good at...

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the...

I write because I have to write; but I also write because there’s somebody out there, hopefully, who will read it.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

I’m against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. I’d almost prefer the word ‘craftsman’. He’s like one of those old-fashioned ship builders who...

So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.