A direct relationship exists between the caliber of the writing you read and the caliber of the writing you make.

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and...

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

What’s the use of writing poetry for your peers? I don’t think I should sell my poetry to other poets. If that’s who my audience is, I’m dead, I’m not going to make any money.

Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

From … the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. … I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that...

One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front...

‘Books had always been my best friends and all I wanted to do was lose myself in them, and better yet if the worlds and characters were of my own making.’

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

There are stages we all go through when dealing with character deaths. Grief. Anger. Denial. Laughter. Coulson.

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier...

Music pulls words from the heart and inspires brilliance.

Don’t be afraid to write and share your story with the reading world! Find your courage! It is a fact that some will love it and some will hate it, but there will always be...

Fragments are the only forms I trust.

Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is interesting.

When you write something down, it stays forever.It’s like a little part of you that you’re giving to the universe

Writer’s block? I’ve heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn’t a writer anymore. I’m sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing...

An author really ought to have nothing but flowers in the room where he works.

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very...

Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add...

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I...

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.

Writers who copy or plagiarise others are dreaming in another man’s sleep.

As for my next book, I won’t write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

DWIGHT:Stay smart. Stay cool. It’s time to prove to you’re friends that you’re worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying. Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.

The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

continuity”… Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function… I am not an entertainer…

Digital distribution has widened the reading world.

Remember: Writing is drawing.

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of “Remember to never split an infinitive” and “The passive voice should never be used.” The notion of making a mistake while...

I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it’s no surprise that I ended up writing for a living.

The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For Life. The role affected me deeply. I was haunted by this talented genius who took...

That’s why it’s difficult to write about your own life. Any distortion feels like a betrayal.

May it be written. May it be done.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

The subject may be crude and repulsive. Its expression is artistically modulated and balanced. This is style. This is art. This is the only thing that really matters in books.

It’s harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I’m not sure. Perhaps because great books seem...

However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

That’s for me!” I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not...

The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

You’re writing someone’s ‘future’ favorite book.

It’s about the possibility, or otherwise, of meaning in the world. And the possibility, or otherwise, of writing. And the possibility, or otherwise, of the resolution of everything into some coherent, cogent vision.