When life gives you lemons ~ write about ’em!

Don’t fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

But it wasn’t the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn’t feel any passion to write about the place. I...

writer”.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Mr Earbrass was virtually asleep when several lines of verse passed through his mind and left it hopelessly awake. Here was the perfect epigraph for TUH:A horrid ?monster has been [something] delay’dBy your/their indiff’rence in...

I write because he needs to know.

Writing is prayer.

I have a pesky little critic in the back of my mind. He’s a permanent fixture and passes judgment on everything I write.In order to placate him, especially when I’m endeavoring to write anything as...

As an author, I want to write what I’m inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into...

I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer.

The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the...

I like to let ideas simmer in my brain until they’re well done.

But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.

Chameleonesque, hobbitish, unicorned, stompled, selfishism, and unwakeable may not be real words, but you do know what they mean.

All the time I’m not writing I feel like a criminal. It’s horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It’s much more relaxing to actually write.

For the real writers, every decision is either write or wrong.

Bye-bye. Nice knowing you. But if you are waiting for that perfect idea to strike like lightning during a dust storm (I live in New Mexico), you could be waiting a long time. Ideas are...

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do...

Identifying Your DreamSome people can easily identify one primary dream. For others, a dream is more elusive. These people often have many dreams at once, or a general idea of a dream that never takes...

It’s not what you lift, it’s where you carry it.

I know that life is busy and hard and that there’s crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don’t. Please don’t. Please keep believing...

Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time. The secret of making it is simple: discard everything that is good enough.

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly — with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow.In...

And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of...

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry...

The purpose of a writer is to show the beauty and tragedy of life in the reader’s own mirror.

All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.

Writing is the dancing of words, sometimes it is beautiful and meaningful, sometimes it is not.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

It’s in my blood, as magic is in yours.” His mouth is still smiling, but his tone is somber. “I couldn’t stop writing even if I wanted to.

Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am...

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s really a stupid thing to want to do.

Writing my blog has saved me thousands on therapy.

You are not responsible for the reader, you’re only responsible for what you are writing.

Tears are words that need to be written.

I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it’s been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.

George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and...

This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so...

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.

You’ll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one.

I sat down and tried to write a story.”Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight.”That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just...

I can read lips. Especially if they have words tattooed on them.

On his office wall he had a note to himself: ‘Money is necessary–but it isn’t too important.’ Money meant for him to keep on writing and to go his own way.

The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you’re going to see it blink black. That’s the moment to start writing.

I’m supposed to a man who never blows his composureA boy trapped in a war, forced to be a soliderThe weight of the world just put on top of my shouldersBut if there’s one thing...

One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.