Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Yes, it’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to.

I would rather spend money on something, that fulfills me for eternity. Rather, than something that fulfills me for only an hour or two.

My characters don’t always know more than the reader does, because my readers get the best seat in Paper House.

I write because I’m free,because I can,because I will. I write because I must,because I’m breathing,because I’d go crazy otherwise,because it’s who I am.I write to make a statement,to share my thoughts,to discover myself,to express...

Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or...

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy...

…there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk...

In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that...

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Some of the best characters are the most flawed characters.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why...

If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It...

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s...

Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren’t flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is.

Why use long words when short ones will do? Not all readers have been to college or university.

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up...

It seems as if I can only thing if I write my journal, it just connects the part of my head that is busy doing things with the part that is busy thinking about everything...

I write across several genres. I’m a slut for words. I can’t keep it in my literary pants.

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances;...

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Writing starts with living.

Kuandika hadithi ni kitu kimoja. Kuweka kanuni za fasihi katika hadithi ni kitu kingine.

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)

I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your...

…if you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat – creativity is a rugged terrain…

Writers will happen in the best of families.

The poet was, of course, always present to assist the debater. Though the logic of Lewis’s Christian apologetics may be fallible, the imagination of the writing with its brilliantly-conceived analogies is itself enough to win...

I read a lot of books. Here are the books I’m using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have...

I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you...

a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn’t stifle enough of them.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

An artist must be passionately in love with her art. Obsessed or possessed ― go mad for what you believe in.

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

… and I realise the only way to tell the others is through the way my voice can take these broken wordsand turn it into music. Turn it into poetry.And I sing to make myself...

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk...

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they...

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make them...

The written word can make one pause and contemplate. It can make a reader sigh to dream or question a belief in considerable depth. But all of that is nothing if those words fail to...

Writer’s Block is just an excuse by people who don’t write for not writing.

It is strange to hear my wordsRead back to me.I don’t think I wrote themTo have them ever leave the page.I think I only writeWhat happens across my brainWhen my feet are too weary To...

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Sometimes ideas flow from my mind in a raging river of stringed sentences; I can scarcely scribble on the page fast enough to keep up with the mental current. Sometimes, however, beavers move in and...

Truthfully, there’re only a handful of people in this world who really get joy from seeing you happy. Most won’t care if you’re happy, only if you’re miserable like they are. They eat that shit...

Create a guidebook of creative dreamsYou can use a blank book or just blank paper clipped together. Put photographs or scraps from magazines in that represent your creative dreams. Draw, scribble, or paint in between...