In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities…it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.”(A Qualified Farewell)

I became a writer so that the voices inside my head would become an acceptable occurrence.

Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.

If words are to enter men’s minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.

I’ve never yet run out of ideas what to write about… only out of time to write it in.

I do not believe that I should only write about what I know but that I should write also of the other.

An editor doesn’t just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its...

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They’ve got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,’ writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the...

His indirect way of approaching a character or an action, striving to realize it by surrounding rather than invading it, is ideally suited to the indefinite and suggestive presentation of a ghost story.(introduction to “Sir...

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

There is a fine line between fair criticism and jealous assault.

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I’m hoping...

Writing isn’t a source of pain. It’s psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually to father them.

She felt she had been created by the demands of others, by their insatiable appetite for something beyond ordinary life. They craved a world without death and they had spotted her, in their hunger, like...

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person...

I’d never be where I am if more successful writers hadn’t taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

Writing is how I process the cacophony of each day. Prayer is how God makes sense out of my scribbles.

I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.

What doesn’t kill us gives us something new to write about.

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.

As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people’s lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history....

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...

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

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

Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.

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.

…if he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody else, any more than a woman can have a baby by watching some other woman...

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.

why do I sleep? Because I dream, and that is where I hear the best stories and find the hidden destinations of life.

She met a boyand called him Stargazerbecause instead of poemshe recited the names of constellations.He said the freckles on his armswere roadmaps to the sky,and the bruises that he carriedwere supernovas in disguise.”Stargazer

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.

Writer’s block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at theold typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing popsinto your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you dowhen this happens is...

The world doesn’t fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.

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...

Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don’t know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who’ll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a...

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent...

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...

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind…The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were...

{When Abraham Lincoln was 26 years old in 1835, he wrote a defense of Thomas Paine’s deism; a political associate, Samuel Hill, burned it to save Lincoln’s political career. Historian Roy Basler, the editor of...

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.

We may think of ourselves as static anti-heroes, but in reality we’re dynamic protagonists just waiting for our courage to kick in.

Let your passion bleed through your work. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Every writer knows that words are the enemy.

A story isn’t a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It’s an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.

We place memories on pieces of paper to know they will always exist.

Crazy by definition isKnowing that true sanity isA figment of the educated mind