Well, lucky I can do anything at all.

Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.

An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom every body is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.

Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions...

In other words, if Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy showed more than their fair share of pathology it was due less to the requirements of their creative work than to the personal sufferings caused by the unhealthy...

Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable.

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.

Stick to what you know and always be true to yourself. If you do that, your writing will be true, also.

Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a...

The surest path to success is to learn to have a healthy relationship with failure. If we aren’t failing, then we aren’t doing anything interesting.

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It’s a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then...

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis...

In the example of the navigator, no writing was essential to draw the meaning of observing the object at a distance from the ship. In the real theobservation has been noted and that is enough...

Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don’t keep space in your head for writing, you won’t write even if you have the time.

Write when drunk. Edit when sober. Market it with the persistence of a drug peddler.

At the level of high culture with which this book is concerned, active bigotry is probably fairly rare. It is also hardly ever necessary, since the social context is so far from neutral. To act...

I tried to think outside the box but couldn’t open the lid.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of...

the writing of somemenis like a vast bridgethat carries youoverthe many thingsthat claw and tear.The Wine of Forever

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

Tonight, I decided to take a stroll down to my local liquor store. Maybe I’ll find a refreshment to wash down this full moon. I hate showing up & the clerk fucking knows my name,...

She said that in writing anything, you must be perfectly honest.

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said “It is the trade entering his body.

If you end your story, it’s a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don’t, it belongs to anyone’s imagination. It stays alive forever.

Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.

I write to create a sky where the moon can touch the sun and not get burned.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.

Write what you know.

Today is your wright-time. Anything worth writing will be, or has been written already. A great story chooses its writer lest no wright should boast. Just write! If you don’t, you will come right in...

I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been...

I am the perfect version of me.

Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a...

The audience– the book’s actual cast– quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would...

But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what...

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.

When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the...

Mortality rose.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist.

His importance to the century just past, and therefore his status as a figure in history as well as in literature, derives from the extraordinary salience of the subjects he ‘took on,’ and stayed with,...

I don’t think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it’s raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable,...

All trademarks, company names, registered names, products, characters, mottos, logos, jingles and catchphrases used or cited in this work are the property of their respective owners and have only been mentioned and or used as...

Language is a door. Words en-trance and are an entrance; they draw you in. When you read, the book you cradle disappears and the tales within unfold in your mind. Writing is a shelter of...

While I have the floor, here’s a question that’s been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels ....

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

The words ran away with me.

If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.

There is nothing quite like this novel with its rage and ragings, its discontent and angry restlessness. Wuthering Heights is a virgin’s story.

I think it is because I have a habit, when I am bored or disgusted with people of stepping suddenly into my own world and shutting the door. People resent this — I suppose it...