I don’t like writers whose writing is so obvious that I can predict what he’ll write while I’m still taking in his current thoughts. Why, this means that I know what he knows, and the...

Fill your papers with the breathings of your heart.

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

You can read until you’re blue in the face, but I’d recommend writing until you’re red in the face. And ass.

(I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. (“The Adoration of The...

The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.

I hope you enjoy reading my book as much as I didn’t enjoy writing it. Just kidding! I hope you don’t enjoy it at all.

If this typewriter can’t do it, then fuck it, it can’t be done.

I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because...

A book is a suicide postponed.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn’t keep up with what’s out there ain’t gonna be out there.

The best thing about being a writer is that ‘work’ is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.

First organizing it on paper isn’t just academic, it’s an applied prerequisite for manifestation.

And people turn to internet with the hope that in this virtual world, where real identity need not be disclosed, they will find someone before whom they could be their true self,without any pretensions and...

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

Honestly…this is why I write.I write to get the happy ending I sometimes feel is eluding me.I write for my sanity.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also...

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal...

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on...

Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses.

There’s an old rule of theater that goes, ‘If there’s a gun on the mantel in Act I, it must go off in Act III.’ The reverse is also true.

Chase your dreams until you catch them…and then dream, catch, and dream again!

The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. … Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and...

Don’t be offended if you encounter some good-natured ribbing; the idea ofwriting a novel in a month deserves to be laughed at.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.

One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer… is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating,...

Spelling Bees are useless and unnecessary competitions. Before Microsoft Word and Google, Spelling Bees had value, but now they are all superflewus.

sometimes i am not sure.if i am writing the poemor the poemis writing me.

By all means, tell the cops about the crazy robot lady with the black leather body suit and the Kill Bill sword. Hope you like straitjackets.

I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure for them.

If you’re young and talented, it’s like you have wings.

I like to read and write because it is the ONLY thing that takes my mind off of the real world and my spinning worries. It is a time I can be free of anxiety,...

Respect your dream.

Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.

Never interrupt an author when he or she is ‘in the zone’, else you’ll understand the real meaning of ‘writer’s nib’.

… All who have brought about a state of sex-consciousness are to blame, and it is they who drive me, when I want to stretch my faculties on a book, to seek it in that...

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you’re merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that’s...

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the...

When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that...

Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you’ll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other’s work as...

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver,...

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it’s made truly. The thing...

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people...

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.