Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews,...

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.

I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

A Gift for YouI send you…The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope...

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

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

Good fiction creates its own reality.

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

If we accept the premise that we’re always wrong, it really removes the incentive to spend a lot of time trying to make good guesses because even the good guesses turn out to be wrong....

88.People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like...

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

We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie. At night we don’t...

You know, everybody’s ignorant, just on different subjects.

People say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a mighty quotation is worth more than a thousand pictures.

In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another....

Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It’s stuff that doesn’t fly by tropes or adhere to rules — appropriate, perhaps, since...

Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones.

Hey, what is that over there?” and I pointed over your shoulder, and when you turned to look I scribbled my name on the bottom of page one.

The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no...

People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.

Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s...

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933]

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only...

Love is wind for the soul

I do not fear that “future generations will not read novels,” etc. It is probably a complete misunderstanding to conceive of serious art in categories of production, market, readers, supply and demand(…)art is not the...

Always suffer delusions of grandeur with your art. What you are unable to face will never hurt you

If the novel is dead, I’m a necrophiliac.

Let’s have lunch.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

All my best writing was written before 1982, and then a significant event happened to me: I was born.

Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they’re just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.

If the ink of my writing morphed into ants, would they march along with my thoughts? Would they find my work as enjoyable as a picnic? If the answer is no, I wouldn’t hesitate to...

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but is 400% less valuable, because a picture only captures one of the senses—sight. However, words can describe the other four senses, making writing four times more potent...

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

All Quiet on the Western Front.

Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing,...

Who is this guy taking care of my oral hygiene?

My earliest poems appear almost skeletal to me now – it seems I’ve learned to add meat, muscle and a nice suit of clothes.

If you’re going to fall in love with anyone, fall in love with a writer. Allow yourself to become immortalised in words.

I should walk away. That would be the right thing to do. It would be the smart thing. But I can’t, because I’m Taylor Caldwell, the girl who cuts.

In the name of being social, we learn to ignore our natural instinct.Society keeps dictating do’s and don’ts which we keep obeying day in and day out.

There were no absolutes in fiction, no certain way to deliver what was needed. So it was no surprise most technical writers considered novel-writing a gateway to madness.

True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to...

If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no...

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be–not seem–outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined–as a means of being spontaneous. That one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures...

As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball...