It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

Remember…we don’t see objects, we see light. […] Light can do anything water can do–flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do–paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always...

It’s a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the...

If the boy who drawslets you look over his shoulder.If the poetsmilesand shows you her words.If the girl who sings for the shower only,hums a songin front of you.Know that you’re no longer a personbut...

For some, vampires are still firmly in the ‘evil, scary’ column. However, in recent decades, vampires also run the gamut from evil to morally ambiguous all the way to fangless and vegetarian. I think part...

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but...

The Bible, most influential book, which have the ability to transform many lives.

10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don’t want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don’t.Write every day.Keep writing.

Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.

(on teaching writing) So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, ‘How do I make a living from this?’ It’s a fair enough question and one I always try to...

I want to write. I’ve already told my mother: That’s what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. […] She’s against it, it’s not...

A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are clinging to old hurts and wounds and that writing which offers to us a space...

A writer’s courage: to leave a blank page blank.

Writing started out as a kind of therapy for me. I was bullied mercilessly in high school, and I lived vicariously through Kitty. She was everything I wanted to be; strong, smart, witty, and above...

Writing is my passion. It’s in my blood like a talent is. Like dancing, or singing, or drawing, I write. I can never stop writing. It helps me to express everything I’m afraid to talk...

Every word Martone sets down, finally, a choice that limits the universe, their trail across the page a fossil record of some life’s life-story.

Writing has the power of permanence.

I think, because…well, I like the idea of coming up with a story that never existed before, but I don’t really want to be in charge. I don’t want to be famous. I guess I...

Beginnings are so important. Just finding that right moment to introduce this character, this world, it’s everything.

There’s a magic to letting a story and its people unfold with witchcraft and late nights and walks in the woods. You don’t lead a story. You follow it.

They want to be stimulated. They want to read something that can get under their skin and hang out there for a while.

It must take a lot of self-discipline,’ she said.’Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have much.’ He felt himself about to say again, and unable to resist saying, that ‘Dumas, I think it was Dumas,...

Like the ‘good’ characters in literature, the sane don’t have any memorable lines.

I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, ‘I feel as if I have looked down a corridor...

Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you.

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

How many pages will it take to tell your story?

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.

We make a home for ourselves, every time we work on something: actors, writers, singers, building these little nests in our gypsy souls, in place of the ones we so seldom seem to make in...

My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me–as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this...

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing....

great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this after I am deadit means I...

he best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one – everything depends on the circumstances, a...

I can’t believe I wrote that many words in a row.

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership...

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world...

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.

…the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e.,...

Everything that drowned me taught me how to swim.

I don’t existmetal pressed to pagesspilling blood, inkin vein each thought ragesSunlight shootingthrough a forest of pinesblack top windingand yellow dotted linesI am not hereonly a deep aching,a lightning flashand a tree trunk breakingSheets once...

A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you’ll never forget.

Listen to your inner self, it knows you best.

Here is a lesson in creative writing.First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.And I realize some of you may be...

Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”[From the preface.]

If you are alone, tell some stories to yourself. This is a different kind of pleasure and it has, indeed, its reward. I have tasted a little of everything, and I have truly never enjoyed...

Perfect grammar–persistent, continuous, sustained–is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.

The real Julian Wells didn’t die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track.

…Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn’t the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn’t there more danger in ignorance than...

Most people carry their demons around with them, buried down deep inside. Writers wrestle their demons to the surface, fling them onto the page, then call them characters.