Show, don’t tell.” Thanks for nothing, Mr. Cryptic.

My ideas are a shapeless mass that my writing molds into beauty.

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That’s why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and...

Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter–it is the only filter. If...

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O’Brien

When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend’s sisters,I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was...

Imagine in vibrant, wonderful detail your heart’s desire—a reality only you can envision, an adventure only you can direct.Then cradle your creation. Caress it. Mold it. Coddle it until it comes to life.And when your...

When there’s music in your soul, there’s soul in your music.

Writing a novel is easy… writing checks is hard.

The challenge of the writer is to transform—artistically and imaginatively—a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.

Only a writer would slap a bumper sticker on her car that read, ‘Seriously, I’d rather be working’.

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

Write at a pace that doesn’t surpass your creative flow. Don’t be hasty; don’t be sloppy. Don’t forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and...

Some days I wonder if I stopped writing about him, if I’d love him a little less.

I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and...

I love writing poetry because it’s pretty. I love writing pretty.

I wisely started with a map.

When I finally find that one willing agent, I’ll have found my prize in the Cracker Jack box.

Good writing just isn’t that common.

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

When you’re a writer, the question people always ask you is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Writers hate this question. It’s like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Where do you get your...

This is the very structure of sports journalism: deification and damnation, death and resurrection, failure and redemption. You succeed so you can falter so you can succeed again. We need a rise and a fall....

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.

V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens,...

Buku yang kau tulis adalah semacam jejak yang terus menyala di dunia, dan bisa menjadi cahaya akhiratmu.

What do you do when your head – your imagination is filled with tales to last a hundred lifetimes?You focus on the really good ones!

Writing blooms flowers for mind, which last forever.

It is a lie to write in such way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary groups in the intellectual gazettes.

If a novel’s salient aim is virtue, I want to throw it against the wall.

I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost,...

Don’t think too much. There’ll be time to think later. Analysis won’t help. You’re chiseling now. You’re passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There’s something there. It isn’t...

Look, don’t just stare at the pages,” I used to tell my students. “Become the characters. Live inside the book.

What are you going to do? “Can’t say – run for president, write -” “Greenwich Village?” “Good heavens, no – I said write – not drink.

And that’s why books are never going to die. It’s impossible. It’s the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book...

Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.

When I walk into [the studio] I am alone, but I am alone with my body, ambition, ideas, passions, needs, memories, goals, prejudices, distractions, fears. These ten items are at the heart of who I...

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an...

Part of my soul goes into each quote I write. A book of my quotes can be yours for just $19.99.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Creative exhaustion is first cousin to writer’s block. First off, I try to accept that when it hits, I am not wasting time, but preparing myself to return to work. I blog more. I do...

People always see me writing and ask me if they can read my writing. The answer is yes, after I publish it and they pay for it.

I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.

I once wrote a book ten stories high. Each story was a story.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow...

Don’t lift my words without permission. It might lead to a hernia.

I write things that I would like to read myself.

I think the perfect pen name is Quill McSeagull. Especially for writing flights of fancy—and nothing has more feathers than a love poem.

If you can quit, then quit. If you can’t quit, you’re a writer.

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness....