You played it with great seriousness. And it is not such an uncommon game. Do you know Ibsen’s poem — To live it to do battle with trolls in the vaults of the heart and...

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and...

There’s something terribly weird about the standard fantasy setting–not least of which the fact the phrase “standard fantasy setting” can be uttered without irony.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to...

But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work?” “I’ll make time,” I promised. “The house will not...

I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will...

Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen.

I don’t think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

It’s a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to...

Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying, my editor at the time Terri Windling and I sat down to figure out what to call what...

But then why do we write if not to tackle the fears that others look to us to conquer?

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

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.

Digital distribution has widened the reading world.

Remember: Writing is drawing.

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...

May it be written. May it be done.

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come...

What do you want to write? What gets your goat? What irks you to no length? If you could change the world with words, what would they be?

Stories matter. They shape our lives, expectations, and dreams. They are the warp and weave of our human existence, binding us into a fabric far stronger than any individual element

Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we love survive however evanescently. As do we...

You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the...

Acceptance and validation are the fuels of the future.

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost...

It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through — a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.

Don Quixote could never manage without his patient servant Sancho Panza.

Every story is entitled to have a ‘happily ever after’ ending. However, not all characters are so deserving.

The writer’s job is to free language from the prison of ideas.

Let your characters lead when you’re dancing together.

Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, but also...

if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats.” And with that I left him. I hope, for...

But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then—all the combinations made—they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.

But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses...

Never fails. Every new book I write seems impossible, writes like I’m typing from dictation, edits like I didn’t write it, and finishes like I couldn’t possibly have written it.

Writing is storytelling and all of us are authors, not just of words but of reality. You are the author of your life, so go out and live! Then never quit writing about it!

I am a trained professional liar. Do not read me as a textbook.

Life is a story within a story.