Write at a pace that doesn’t surpass your creative flow. Don’t be hasty; don’t be sloppy. Don’t forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and...

Some days I wonder if I stopped writing about him, if I’d love him a little less.

I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and...

We like to take credit when we get a new idea, as if we originated the idea in our brain, but what we actually did was no less extraordinary: we channeled the idea.

Our creative dreams are subject to grudge-holding when we decide that other people somehow have made their dreams real and we have not.

Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think that that’s—that that’s it. That that’s the point, that that’s the goal, you...

To write freely is to walk a joyous, terrifying, exhilarating path naked through the world of the fully clothed.

I want to write my own eulogy, and I want to write it in Latin. It seems only fitting to read a dead language at my funeral.

No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief

to the depths, to the depths.

Don’t keep your Muse locked up in the closet. Set them free to dance across the page and what they create will be a masterpiece.

My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.

I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don’t. Some read; some don’t. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make...

Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us...

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Memang sulit menulis puisi. Dan untuk apa mempersulit diri sendiri.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves — you can get a complete education for no money. At...

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn’t matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer...

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

You keep your followers confused when you begin very well and give up too early… Suspense is useful in movies, but useless when writing your success stories!

It’s rather disconcerting to sit around a table in a critique of someone else’s work, only to realize that the antagonist in the story is none other than yourself, and no one present thinks you’re...

Woolrich had a genius for creating types of story perfectly consonant with his world: the noir cop story, the clock race story, the waking nightmare, the oscillation thriller, the headlong through the night story, the...

The best way to be original is to not copy anyone.

Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he...

Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I’m not giving advice. I don’t instruct. At my best, I delight. That’s my job.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Kalo nggak nulis, ya baca. Kalo nggak baca, ya nonton film saja lah.

My advice is to write in the nude. Unless you do your writing in a public restroom, and in that case, I’d recommend wearing flip flops.

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don’t have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It’s not a good arrangement....

To find the courage to keep writing after constant failure is awesomeness. Winning is eminent.

The Book of Us. I’m writing it. And you’re in it.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

I am fun, friendly, and I know how to use the third comma in a list of three distinct items or things. In my book that makes me a better lover, because I wrote it....

I have an idea and a first line — and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of...

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom...

Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft.The metal point’s gone from my pen, there’s nothing left but the feather.Gutman:That may be true.But what can you do about it?Byron:Make a departure.Gutman:From yourself?Byron:From my...

Voglio dire che io fiuto le belle storie a chilometri di distanza. Quindi non tenti di nascondermene una. Sputi fuori, forza, e in cambio si guadagna una fetta di questo fantastico dolce con i buchi...

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

I wasn’t that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn’t write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I...

He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers....

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told,...

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.

Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction.

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s...

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

. . . I understand that I was writing (recording) as well as seeking to right (to rectify) the wrong, and now, as I retell the tale, I realize that ‘I am still at the...

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write...