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.

He thinks he’s a writer. He couldn’t write the alphabet, even if you spotted him the first 25 letters.

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write… Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I...

A pen is like a switchblade you can actually write with—and pull off a successful mugging with.

These are old words, old stories and we are not here to blindly repeat them. They are not law. They are power, nourishment. There is a river of voices coming out of the past, resonating...

Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don’t always...

Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

I’ll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I’ll dictate it, if it comes to that. They’ll have to pry my pen out of...

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.

You might say as you tirelessly said of my stories, at least of the adjectives, that I should render the evidence, not render the verdict… (“Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To...

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

Marriage can be made to work if both the partners can see beyond themselves and understand the limitations,needs and abilities of the other person and are willing to embrace the positive and negative aspects of...

The best kind of happiness is a habit you’re passionate about.

When I write, I don’t translate for white readers…. Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we’re able to read him. If I’m specific, and I don’t overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled…in a unique and inimitable way.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

If you treat your characters like people, they’ll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.

If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the...

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be...

Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.

I often said that writers are of two types.There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many...

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The...

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I’m concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I’ve never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my...

Using my nipples as bait, I went fishing for compliments. I got a few bites, but nothing to write about in Field & Stream.

We can learn to pay attention, concentrate, devote ourselves to authors. We can slow down so we can hear the voice of texts, feel the movement of sentences, experience the pleasure of words–and own passages...

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as...

She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origins.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that...

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success.

When I write…I am in the fond armsof a childhood friendupon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawingsof my woes.

Read and write. That’s the recipe for being a writer.

Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It’s harsh and sometimes gritty, but it’s real. Why should we tip toe around that?

Readers are the glue that binds the books together.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Writing a novel is like having a dream.

I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only...

The thing that worries me is that I’m so different from other writers. Connecticut is just another state to me. And nature – well, nature is just nature. When I see a tree whose leafy...

All raw, uncooked, protesting.”(on Aldous Huxley)

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.