The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally...

She used to write all the time,’ Elizabeth explained, ‘before she lost all that weight. Remember? When she was the butt of everyone’s jokes instead of the girl all the boys want to date?

Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts… for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and...

People tell me I look like my father. I’ve never seen my dad, so does that mean I look invisible?

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.

Writing comes from the fear of failure not from the joy of winning.

Art is the writer not having control, but the subject having control of the writer.

To say that a writer’s hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it’s like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer’s build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The...

I read the writings of great men and women so that I can think bigger thoughts.

Writing is the dancing of the mind on a stage called paper.

On having a backup plan: “Always a good plan anytime you want to follow your dream – I love writing, acting, and psychiatry – there are crazy people everywhere which means I can take my...

A blank page has more power than a full page with blind thoughts.

I would make a HORRIBLE outlaw. I can plan the crime perfectly, but I’d also need to plan the outcomes to make it work.

I can tell you that the writing of a book, no matter how deeply, profoundly personal-if it is literature, if you have attended to the formidable task of illumination the human heart in conflict with...

A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths.

I am in awe of flowers. Not because of their colors, but because even though they have dirt in their roots, they still grow. They still bloom.

I’ve been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it’s too late, but I see now how badly I’ve deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you...

When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is...

And perhaps,frozen somewhere with time,Our words will never cease to rhyme

Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is...

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer’s block.

I wish my stove came with a Save As button like Word has. That way I could experiment with my cooking and not fear ruining my dinner.

Dziewicza strona, biała. Pierwsza skalana i odrzucona. Wszystkie te marzenia, obietnice: czekanie, aż będę mogła znowu pisać, a potem bolesny, sfuszerowany gwałt na pierwszej kartce.

A writer should be a recluse. Why share words with a few friends in the moment when they can be written down in solitude and shared with everybody at any time?

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

It’s 3:33 am as I’m writing this down on loose sheets of printer paper. I’m in the back office sitting behind the manager’s desk, just enjoying the good life. In essence, this job enables me...

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is...

I wrote half this book (the left half) while I was asleep, and I wrote the other half (the top half) while daydreaming. So here we have a case where two halves equal one quarter,...

You begin to suspect, as you gaze through this you-shaped hole of insight and fire, that though it is the most important thing you own — never deny that for an instant — it has...

It has often been saidthere’s so much to be read,you never can cramall those words in your head.So the writer who breedsmore words than he needsis making a chorefor the reader who reads.That’s why my...

It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?

The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a...

…’being published’ is not the same as being a real writer.

I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all, the true nature of things being revealed only...

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

For those who can do it and who keep their nerve, writing for a living still beats most real, grown-up jobs hands down.

Nothing’s a better cure for writer’s block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat—chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange.

He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.

Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and...

You must feel it from within. You must want to write the book. You must desire to write the book

Writing is a form of running away. Running away to a place you made by your own hand.

Why am I compelled to write?… Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a...

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the...

Sometimes you can write about a character’s day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.

They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that’s how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the...

Perhaps as writers, we too should embrace the concept of wabi-sabi:

When you left you left behind a fieldof silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds…you left a million butterfliesmid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you...