In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they’re best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish – we’re famous for travelling in search of adventure.

I write to reach eternity

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

I create, therefore I am.

I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

1. Write every day2. Write what interests you.3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.)4. Write with honest emotion5. Be careful of being facile6. Be wary...

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it’s there for a reason, and that’s to make the world a better place.

Originality is not writing the story that has never been told, but writing the stories only you can tell.

All writers–all beings–are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force…All writers are exiles wherever they live and their...

I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I’m one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.

Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him.

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”(Letter 16, 1657)

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

We shared ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership.

Writing is discovering what you don’t know.

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove.

Cowok itu jarang nulis. Sekalinya iya, ada dua kemungkinan :a. Langsung bagus dan jadi dewa (macamnya Kak Fauzi : dua dari dua buku yang aku beli mengesankan ^^. Sayang Genere Fantasy enggak dilirik orang kebanyakan)b....

Speak in your own voice about the things that matter to you.

There are only two ways, really, to become a writer. One is to write. The other is to read.

The right to write is too sacred to be wrong with.

Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.”(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

I used to believe authenticity could be achieved solely by describing, in our own words, one’s own fragment of experience. This was of course predicated on the complete intellectual and aesthetic independence of the “I”....

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to...

In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript [Master and Margarita] (about 22 chapters). The most important remains – editing, and it’s going to be hard. I will have to pay close attention to...

The art of living. Isn’t that a funny expression?

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don’t like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.

Perhaps I can fight evil with words.

Revenge is a dish best served published!

Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.

Talent isn’t enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you’re young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have...

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Despite my affection for subtext and plot and prose at its best… life, it turns out, is nothing more than the finer details.

I’m drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo...

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.(“Literature, Revolution, and Entropy”)

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent...

Writing to impress others is the surest path to pretentious mediocrity.

Good” now is better than “Best” never.

Writing an unwritten thing, read the unreadable.

Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation… If one is to record one’s life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of...

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart”- Phyllis Theroux

Just because you’re breathing, doesn’t mean you’re alive.

My pen beats faster as I write with my heart

To call yourself an author takes publishing one book. To call yourself an inspirational author is the work of a lifetime that requires being constantly kicked in the stomach, only to get back up on...

Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

When you write, you are telling a story…to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself…over and over again.

I was asked once why I write poetry. I said, why do you breath?