Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips...

You can only write by putting words on a paper one at a time.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which...

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The...

Anyone I love takes away part of my freedom, but in that case it is I who wished it; and there is so much pleasure in loving that one gladly sacrifices something for its sake....

When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Write it down. Not just to remember it, but to forget it in the right way. My notebook are a kind of materialized subconscious, a hard-copy memory and its invisible substrata, following their own rules....

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to...

Don’t analyse your muse too closely, if at all – she’ll turn away.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

Twitter actually may be improving its users’ writing, as it forces them to wring meaning from fewer letters.

You know your heart and soul are stapled to that manuscript, but what we see are the words on the paper

Oh, readers. If only you knew what we’ve gone through for you.

The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore’s best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It’s hard to...

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Not every story started off big enough to notice.

Disabilities are not Liabilities but true test of abilities

Don’t worry about meaning. If a story’s any good, it can’t help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on...

The nature of immortality is a mystery,’ he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.’ But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I...

I love pop culture — the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That’s why I said I don’t like elitism.

Since I am never alone with myself. Since I am always watching the character playing my part in the scene, there is no possibility of spontaneity.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over...

Doing nothing can be as rewarding as doing something. And doing very little can be as productive, in a creative sense, as doing a lot.

To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author...

I love my style of writing. Nope, it’s not the most poetic stuff you’ve ever read but you know, it can evoke emotions and images and smells and sensations, and that is what I set...

I am completely unflustered by whichever medium people choose to read my words. I’m just delighted they’re reading them at all!

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set...

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.

I write for ghosts; the ghosts I can’t see but I know stick around. Some I know are good. Others I know are bad. The first bring me nostalgic comfort while the latter instill unease.

Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.

Find the problem, find the story.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive “its” (no apostrophe) with...

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

All great writers share one thing in common:They finished their books.

I sit in my treeI sing like the birdsMy beak is my penMy songs are my poems.

It’s okay to be crazy as long as you keep writing and are happy.

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the...

And so many things get lost. Not just a set of keys or a photograph of your father with his first truck, but the door those keys once opened, the childhood house you long ago...

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a...

Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? “Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat…” That’s freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence....

I just need to sit, think, write and read.

A dream in the night is but an untold story begging to be written.