A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader.

Thee, my serenity, one can not bear, Seeing thee befuddled, bereaved,Dimmed like the midnight, secluded, darkened,Thee, my serenity,A window to my eyes, A window to laughter, and peace of mind,Thee, my serenity, one can not...

Time to turn some phrases and place them on these here pages.

Poetry is the beauty of life.

Read to escape reality . . . Write to embrace it.

in the beginning was the Word,” John writes, and perhaps part of what that means is that until there is a word, there can be no beginning. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an...

From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in Future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has...

I kill my loneliness by reading and (then) writing, damn.

Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation...

You’ve got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it’s a novel, they know someone’s made it up and they know it’s not real,...

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the...

A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.

I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

What you think and how you think, influences what you ink and how you ink.

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with...

Writing romantic fiction is the second chance that loved ones denied us.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

It is the writer’s job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.

A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in...

Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to...

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

Paradox is beloved of novelists. The despised savior, the humane whore, the selfish man suddenly munificent, the wise fool, and the cowardly hero. Most writers spend their lives writing about unexpected malice in the supposedly...

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They’re just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for.

I wear a helmet when I write, because if you’re doing it right, writing is dangerous.

Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don’t love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of...

we do not write as we want but as we can

The code of the coward is to run away. I know, because I wrote the manual.

They say that I am a poetI wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottleemotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle ondistant shores I am...

If you have a big heart, you will live a large life.

When you use your pen to think, you’re never wasting ink.

If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.

(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front...

If you can listen to or read anything, but misspelled words offend you, raise your hadn.

Without a mission and a sense of whom you write for, you aren’t worth reading.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He...

No one has yet tested the pencilTo see how many words it can write

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is...

I’m the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.

Write. Don’t talk about writing. Don’t tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don’t give me a bunch of ‘somedays’. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it...

Ivanov’s fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of...

Your boss takes a dim view of SEX?

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue!

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be...

All Poets are mad.

Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You’re giving a gift. You’re helping them grow and develop....

I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one’s own pleasure, that fear may be mild — timidity is the word I’ve used here. If, however,...

Words are precious things meant to create, to imagine, to dream with.