During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I...

If I’m still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre–the poems, the poems!–in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac’s horrendous...

The key to high concept is that fresh twist. Make it a big one. Wow your reader. Force her to gasp when she comes to that part in your story.

…writing is like dancing, or sports, where the expression of grace come only through movement.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity...

Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the...

As I quietly stare off into space, eyes glazed over and brow thoughtfully taut, know that I am going about my business. I am a storyteller. Daydreaming is the best part of my job.

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers — namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say,...

Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still.

pencils racing across paper, a sound I like.” Marisol

It’s a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words.

You have made some notes, read some writing books, and done some research. Mostly what you’ve done is talk about writing a book. An idea for a book is not a book; it is a...

We live in a society that doesn’t offer any support or appreciation for ventures that aren’t clearly articulated and aligned for a goal. A writer gets past this. It’s going to be a mess before...

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn’t have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.

We all are rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom.

My writings are my letters to the universe, who loved me like a mother.

People who make snide comments to authors like “anyone can write a book” or “well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can’t be that hard” or poke at a book because it’s “romance” or...

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.

There are two motives for writing a book: one, that you may save what you know, the other, that you may share what you know with the public.

In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die?

If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.

I’m feeling a low regarding writing. I sometimes think I should finish working on my book of stripper poetry that I started, but other times I feel like it’s not worth it. Sometimes I think...

I think that’s why I write—the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.

I’ve always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel – or at least the kind of novel I’m attempting to write. You know,’ he continued, extemporizing as he went along, ‘first you...

I used to be a bumper sticker kind of writer. Now I’m more developed, and my writing often takes up whole bumpers.

I am, as it were, the created creating—a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have...

Hemingway suggested you write the truest sentence you know. I say write the falsest one you don’t know. This is fiction.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

The word ubiquitous is itself ubiquitous in today’s writing.

Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.

When I write I am an avocado, and in a team sport setting, I am guacamole. And not to sour cream on your dreams, but with my love life, I am a nacho.

Only write if you can’t not.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Don’t exercise your freedom of speech until you have exercised your freedom of thought.

Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.

I discovered … that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our...

When you grow up to be an author and write books, you’ll think you’re making the books up, but they’ll all really be true, somewhere.

I don’t believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that’s what an artist is―a politician.

Hell man, I know very well you didn’t come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you’ve got to stick to...

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface...

I’ve found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and...

Her maktul katilinde yaşamaya devam eder.

Para mim cada poema é um mundo próprio, um habitat bizarro de memórias, pessoas, sentimentos, conclusões. Cada verso é um retrato, um objecto precioso, um pedaço que recolho do mundo e visto com palavras. Devolver...

Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline...

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

Writing is like cooking. You toss in a bunch of ingredients and hope the combination of flavors will appeal to someone’s taste.

They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have...