Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I...

Meditation needs no results. Meditation can have itself as an end, I meditate without words and on nothingness. What tangles my life is writing.

Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.

Of course, you cannot just blurt out a quote whenever you feel like it. For a quote to have the desired effect, it must be properly introduced.

The unconscious fabric of human destiny had done with her, unraveling all her grievances and reweaving them as joyous circumstance.

The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I’m thinking about past events. I’m interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and...

Hard writing makes easy reading.

I’m sorry if…I get too personal, if I make you uncomfortable, but writing is like one of the seven deadly sins, like Sharing on Mr. Rogers, and once you get the bug you’re trapped in...

There is only one rule for writing and that is go ahead and start writing.

Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.

The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds,...

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

When I die I hope it may be said:’Her suffering was black, but her books were read’.

Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)

You don’t know what love is until someone lives with you while you write a book.

What you keep alive is what you truly care about, no matter how many times you die in the process.

This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot...

You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I’d written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from...

I’ve never had a rat, never chased one. I chase my own tail and that’s enough. I must now make plans for the day I catch it.

It’s up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don’t even want to use language you and I know or can...

The planet you inhabit is a single plane of infinite dimensions, stretched like a guitar string, and standing before you like a concubine waiting for your command.

If you’re dating a writer and they don’t write about you — whether it’s good or bad — then they don’t love you. They just don’t. Writers fall in love with the people we find...

I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use...

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

Writing is hard, but I don’t want to kill myself trying to write. Not unless I’m writing a suicide note.

We were all journalists, professional truth-seekers, but one thing we knew about the truth that laymen were prone to disregard was that it need not be literal or factual; the unpredictable human personality was itself...

I am an architect of words; there is no limit to the number of ‘stories’ I can create!

As a fiction writer, let me make it up, and let me make it up to you. I’ll pen our love story, if you’ll be my co-author.

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

I’d say my writing voice is original, and I don’t think you’ll find another quite like it. This makes me sad, because when all my clones arrive sometime in the future, their only hope is...

But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it.”[Peter...

So what? All writers are lunatics!

Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.

Writing is about taking everyday observations, things which people see almost every day of their lives, and yet bringing it to their attention for the very first time.

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we’ve looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.

An ancient writer says of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying it.

I write what I want to read. If I were to write what I know, I’d be staring at a blank page forever.

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

Even if you’re in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It’s important to keep telling yourself stories.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

The greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite.

Critics! Appalled I ventured on the name.Those cutthroat bandits in the paths of fame.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.