Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don’t always...

I’ll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I’ll dictate it, if it comes to that. They’ll have to pry my pen out of...

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

Marriage can be made to work if both the partners can see beyond themselves and understand the limitations,needs and abilities of the other person and are willing to embrace the positive and negative aspects of...

When I write, I don’t translate for white readers…. Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we’re able to read him. If I’m specific, and I don’t overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

If you treat your characters like people, they’ll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

If your imaginary friends are at all like mine, they’re better off dead.

If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the...

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be...

Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as...

I often said that writers are of two types.There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many...

I’m not trying to please anyone. I’m just trying to write a damn book.

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I’m concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I’ve never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my...

Using my nipples as bait, I went fishing for compliments. I got a few bites, but nothing to write about in Field & Stream.

Have you ever been writing something when you just forgot where you were, and what time it was, and you kept diving down deeper into your words?No, it’s more like diving down through your words–past...

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as...

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that...

Writing is the supreme solace.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success.

We all have a place within us, that would like to rewrite the way our life was written out for us….That’s why people want to become authors.

When I write…I am in the fond armsof a childhood friendupon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawingsof my woes.

Read and write. That’s the recipe for being a writer.

USURY: Everybody’s looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management...

Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It’s harsh and sometimes gritty, but it’s real. Why should we tip toe around that?

Readers are the glue that binds the books together.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Writing a novel is like having a dream.

I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only...

The thing that worries me is that I’m so different from other writers. Connecticut is just another state to me. And nature – well, nature is just nature. When I see a tree whose leafy...

All raw, uncooked, protesting.”(on Aldous Huxley)

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

I’ve always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.

Most people are afflicted with an inability to say what they see or think. They say there’s nothing more difficult than to define a spiral in words; they claim it is necessary to use the...

Mad House”)

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

Now may this little Book a blessing beTo those that love this little Book, and me:And may its Buyer have no cause to say,His money is but lost, or thrown away.