[On writing:] “There’s a great quote by Julius Irving that went, ‘Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.'”(One On 1, interview with...

Fairy tales are rife with transformation — from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself...

My life will be the best illustration of all my work.

And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation … Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the...

Let me tell you I’m dying.” Well of course I am. So are you.

I surround myself with books when I write, thus surrounding myself with writers… only they don’t critique me and then get up for coffee.

I’ll write the first sentence in English and the second sentence will be nonsense translated to Russian, to make the ultimate non sequitur.

How the excitement comes upon me to tell it all! In the quest of writing, the heart can speed up with anticipation–as it does, indeed, during the chase itself of whales. I can swear it,...

The sign said don’t do it, so naturally I did it. Signs are always saying stuff in a silent way. Writing is a way to say something in a silent way.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

He thinks he’s a writer. He couldn’t write the alphabet, even if you spotted him the first 25 letters.

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write… Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I...

A pen is like a switchblade you can actually write with—and pull off a successful mugging with.

These are old words, old stories and we are not here to blindly repeat them. They are not law. They are power, nourishment. There is a river of voices coming out of the past, resonating...

Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don’t always...

I’ll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I’ll dictate it, if it comes to that. They’ll have to pry my pen out of...

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

Marriage can be made to work if both the partners can see beyond themselves and understand the limitations,needs and abilities of the other person and are willing to embrace the positive and negative aspects of...

When I write, I don’t translate for white readers…. Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we’re able to read him. If I’m specific, and I don’t overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

If you treat your characters like people, they’ll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the...

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be...

I often said that writers are of two types.There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many...

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I’m concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I’ve never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my...

Using my nipples as bait, I went fishing for compliments. I got a few bites, but nothing to write about in Field & Stream.

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as...

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that...

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success.

When I write…I am in the fond armsof a childhood friendupon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawingsof my woes.

Read and write. That’s the recipe for being a writer.

Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It’s harsh and sometimes gritty, but it’s real. Why should we tip toe around that?

Readers are the glue that binds the books together.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Writing a novel is like having a dream.

I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only...

The thing that worries me is that I’m so different from other writers. Connecticut is just another state to me. And nature – well, nature is just nature. When I see a tree whose leafy...

All raw, uncooked, protesting.”(on Aldous Huxley)

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

I’ve always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.

Most people are afflicted with an inability to say what they see or think. They say there’s nothing more difficult than to define a spiral in words; they claim it is necessary to use the...

Writing is a mysterious activity.

Mad House”)