To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books – this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one’s life becomes very small.

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from...

We have story-makers and we have writers apparently most of the today’s writing falls into the first category.

Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro,...

I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it’s...

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd.

That’s why I’ve just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There’s not a book here, Lawford, that hasn’t at least a glimmer of the real thing...

I think that thinking of our material universe, the one we perceive with our sense, as the only thing is not only foolish, it is arrogant. As well as, if I may add, in contradiction...

Chicken Noodle Soup for the Stomach.” I wrote it with alphabet soup, and then edited it with a can of chicken noodle soup.

When my horse is running good, I don’t stop to give him sugar.

Instead of reciting her an original love poem using words, I think I’ll use my tongue to more creatively explore the deepest parts of her.

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of...

Are you kidding? No one is going to want to read this drivel” and keep on going. You’re going to revise and revise and then revise again anyway.

Farber says (in my recollection, anyway) the European (or classical) art, including film, is culturally assumed to be a monumental slab. It’s about that slab, and how it’s been shaped, or what’s been carved on...

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

When you imagine it, feel it, then write it – creation is inevitable.

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back...

Never ever forget that you enlisted in the ranks – you weren’t press ganged or drafted. Nobody owes you anything – least of all respect for your work – until you’ve earned it with what...

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” [Letter to Harrison Blake; November 16, 1857]

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

Regarding the creative: never assume you’re the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you’re masterful.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing,...

From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: “There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the...

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination outward, to take it into the vast external cosmos, and away from all that introversion and introspection,...

Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence; many epic tales are pretty much epic crap.

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”3) Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.4)...

the romance of solitude and small places, the blurring of identity.

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line ‘Don’t palm all your abuses [of language upon me]’ was possibly too rude. ‘It’s in the book,’ I said. He didn’t hit me.

Dear, I can’t write, it’s all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea.

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the...

If she did experience sex–or something close to it–in high school, I’m sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application....

Polysyllables obfuscate a preponderant ignorance with so much more style and panache.

Silently I dance a dance of chaos to the rhythm of a dying sun

Writing is a mysterious activity.

The pen that was once a gift has come to represent all that I hope to achieve.

Blank pages are like monsters that haunt my dreams until I feed them words.

My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn’t like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel...

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible

There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more

Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never...

As long as you write, you’ll never be lonely.