The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

I’m not talented or gifted. I’m a committed, meticulous workaholic. The only reason I succeed is because I refuse to fail.

The movementOf the body isWhere poetryBegins

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn’t work without mystifying the process.The weather is unpredictable,...

The irritating question they ask us — us being writers — is: “Where do you get your ideas?”And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn’t identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you’re the one that bleeds.

Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

I was writing, writing all the time, in my head, looking out at the world.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let...

Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.

To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you’re completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there’s no point to continue.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which...

Hard core authors are determined about their craft, and they know that building a brand entails hard work. They eat, breathe and live their writing.:

You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you’re not. That’d be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open...

There’s a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow...

Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in...

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.

Any fool can write, we start learning it at school at the age of three….

Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion.

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job!

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy – how sad that I could not reinvent the...

The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it’s a struggle. I...

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

A writer is merely a reader that had the guts to be read, and, heard.

If you haven’t cried at least once while writing a chapter of your inspirational book, then you have to ask yourself if your’re writing fiction.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

A first-rate story is easily killed by second-rate design.

Everyone’s life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs. The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin. This is true of inspirational authors. Their books represent only the stages...

Writer speaks a stench.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to...

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books...

I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself...

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage...

Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprose.

When talented people write badly, it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they’re driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people...

You cannot write unless you write much.

This is our skin and nobody has the right to crumple us like a paper only to find another skin to write on, and then another, ruining people like they’re pages, like they are somehow...

Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.

While I was trying to write, I was trying to grow.

You just don’t know writers. They’ll use anything, anybody. They’ll eat their young.

Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You’d better find out if you’re any good at it before you start charging for it.

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even....

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

I’m an aspiring writer.’ I hate that phrase. You’re either a writer or you’re not.

If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn’t fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy...

I wrote this about you, about our love, our story. And I feel so damn lucky that others in this world, strangers in other parts, can steal a piece of what we have and feel...

Building your “dream life” is filled with things that can feel like the opposite of a dream:MistakesDelaysStarting overFailureThe building part is actually more of a rebuilding that is a continual process. The building is not...