I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

If my clone writes my biography, is it really an autobiography?

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

And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh...

I want to write an unreliable narrator. In fact, he’ll be so unreliable that I’m not even sure he’ll show up to narrate.

I don’t know whether Asimov realized he was saying this as well, but as an old historical materialist, if only as an afterthought, he must have realized that he was saying too: No one here...

Look, you could get that safe job and spend your whole life that way, but what are you waiting for? When you’re ninety-six years old and have three days left? Is that when you decide...

I had written all I was going to write, if the truth had been known, and there is nothing wrong with that. If more writers knew that, the world would be saved a lot of...

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.

There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past (“en me retraçant ces détails, j’en suis à me demander s’ils sont réels, ou...

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation, and it seems most true when it eschews artistic devices of any sort.

It’s easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.

Writers strive for the impossible: perfection. Even the universe is flawed.

I write out of revenge.

A writer always writes.

Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at...

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

Horror fiction seems to spawn more dumbass ‘rules’ than any other kind of writing, and one of the dumbest is the assumed ‘requirement’ of a twist ending, going all the way back to H.H. Munro....

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at...

intellectual” snobbery. It’s a hushed but ugly truth that people are made to feel not worthy to be among a certain set – didn’t attend the right school or don’t have the requisite abbreviations to...

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

So when it comes to Elvis and Joe, I have to trust my instincts, because they’ve gotten me here. And I have to write what I believe in, what I find moving.

A good story should provoke discussion, debate, argument…and the occasional bar fight.

I think it’s incomparably sweet when someone writes something for you.. even if it doesn’t rhyme or even if it isn’t very amorous.. even two lines of hatred written for you acknowledges the fact that...

Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night. They are the long haul. They are marriage. Stories, on the other hand, you...

How….will I ever truly depict you?You’re perfect, my writing isn’t.

Writing can take you to places you’ve never been, introduce you to people you’ve never met, take you back to when you first saw those shadows in your room, when you first heard the sounds...

some words bring warmthjust bybeing next to each other.

[A] writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author’s nose for things, he would be reduced to...

Ending a series is a difficult one …….where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from...

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.

History is indeed more than the register of crime,folilies and misfortune of mankind.

Writing ink is the magic that allows nothing to become something. It catches the fleeting idea and seeks out the glances of those who wish to see. Even a random ink splat will mean something...

And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don’t men have romantic notions? Don’t men dream of findingthe perfect love?

A book called Life of Silence would get everyone talking. I should write it, using invisible ink. Or to really make it see-through, I should hire a ghostwriter.

My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking,...

Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.

To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.If a man writes well only when he’s drunk, then I’ll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it’s bad...

I have fallen in love with writing, unknowingly. Instead of thinking whether people will like what I write or not, I decide to write only for one person- myself! I told myself that ‘I as...

St. Bernard said, ‘Every word one writes smites the Devil.

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.

I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and...

Get black on white.

I contend that good children’s stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That’s another way of saying, “Let your characters grow. Up.” And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another...

Humility is an essential quality in writers who want to write well.

There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.

…we could think or feel as we wished toward the characters, or as the poet, discounting history, invited us to; we were the poet’s guest, his world was his own kingdom, reached, as one of...

Never stop writing. Whether you’re writing a novel, screen play or just keeping a journal, it’s integral that you make writing a daily process. The proof of the commitment to your craft is just how...