Does it matter that people and thingsHave words,Have names?If not,Why read any book?A litany of useless lettersDetached from bone, muscle.Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,PersonReal?

Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die. ~J.R. Ward

WILDE: Oh — Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can’t be helped. The betrayal of one’s friends is a bagatelle in the stakes...

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

A Gift for YouI send you…A cottage retreat on a hill in Ireland. This cottage is filled with fresh flowers, art supplies, and a double-wide chaise lounge in front of a wood-burning fireplace. There is...

For me, art that’s alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

You say great artists sell their souls for their art?””Maybe,” she ventured.”That’s true, I suppose. If you’re doing it right, anyway. I’ve probably sold mine. Jack’s certainly sold his. And you, I imagine.””I have not!”...

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to...

The perfect song neither ends nor begins. It is always playing. Remember to stop and listen.

Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.

The panther that has stalked yousince you were a childis old now. No longer wild,and tired of guarding the treasureyou yourself left behind – blind and deaf, she will give it all to youif you...

And you can glance out the window for a moment, distracted by the sound of small kids playing a made-up game in a neighbor’s yard, some kind of kickball maybe, and they speak in your...

I’m telling you, writing the book is easy. The after part will break your back. Not to mention your heart.

The flashing black line on an empty Word document reminds me that my life is counting down second by second, and that if I don’t write I’ll have wasted my time here on earth.

You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may...

To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don’t practice it.

I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when I’m working on a story, I’ll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they’ve taken...

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely...

My purpose of writing is to express my love for you,no matter, who you are, where you live or whatever you do.

You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself....

Your flesh is not a reflection of your soul. So when you look in the mirror, remember that your light outshines your flaws.

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Don’t make the editor’s decision for her by not submitting.

Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the...

I go with the flow but I write against it.

It’s neither and it’s both. That’s the perfect kind of art. Labels only detract from the artist’s intention.

A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker’s mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I’ll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won’t...

Writing a story is like ruling the world. Except it’s even better. How many rulers out there that you know can tell people what they say?

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.

My definition of dictionary can’t be found in the dictionary. Dictionary—A linguistic prison, confining words to well-defined cells, with little chance of parole.

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.

Samuel Clemens.

Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

All thoughts, secret or spoken, belong in a coffee table book written in Braille, so you can really feel the emotions.

Contemporary poets got so obscure that poetry kind of fell out of favor,

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

This book has nothing to do with cats. Or mice. Or self-motivation. This book is 100% 50% finished. But don’t worry, I finished the good half. But don’t be mistaken—the good half isn’t good at...

Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.

First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can’t see or hear...

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

Objectives are only words written on paper without passion and desire

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end...

The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already...

Yeah. Isn’t it great?

Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that’s too much pressure and you’ll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.

Eating was still a sore point with Smriti.She failed to understand,when interesting options like mango juice or chocolates were available,why was she forced by her stupid mother to eat boring regular meals?After much contemplation,Nikhil came...

Just because everybody uses language, that doesn’t mean that they can write even tolerable prose.