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?

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...

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.

Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

you must not come lightly to the blank page.

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers–a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of...

I have always believed in the principle that immediate survival is more important than long-term survival.

But in the wake of ‘Bullet,’ all the guys wanted to know was, ‘How’s it doing? How’s it selling?’ How to tell them I didn’t give a flying fuck how it was doing in the...

Being a blesséd writer is a cursed attribute, when you wish to no longer be encompassed by someone and yet you are surrounded by loose leaf papers filled with the sound of his voice.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he...

I think I’ve lost my faith and I can’t stop writingbecause I don’t know howmuch longer I can hold on.

I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after ‘semicolons,’ and another one after ‘now.

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story....

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn’t true!

This has been done by masters of the trade and Garcia had taken in every stock situation with amazing powers of retention, but he had not put things together right and had used extraordinary discernment...

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which...

It just happens to be the way that I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of...

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You’ll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I’m still learning what it is about...

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

What compels me to write now is the same as all those years ago. It is the love of writing and storytelling, driven by a desire to escape.

The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured – we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

Authors – trust in your vision.

Everything has its poetry. 94

Being a writer is a good, good thing.

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.

I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought...

Sometimes, God doesn’t send you into a battle to win it; he sends you to end it.

It’s always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hand...

Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a “capacity for clear thought,” able...

Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus...

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers’ job specification.

History never repeats itself, historians do.

My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.

In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I’ve discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of...

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

I get a fine warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see...

I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.

The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read.

Urban Fantasy is the orphan left on the doorstep that no-one knows what to do with.

Dreamworlds can maintain themselves only as glimpses. Once the writer transports the reader across the threshold, nothing that was promised can be delivered. What was ominous becomes ordinary; what was bizarre, quotidian. Unless you simply...