I did point out that I have no prophetic gifts. I write books because I tried to do something more useful and failed. Since I’ve been trained to write, I do that as a defense...

There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It’s a kind of trick of the mind and he is born with it.

A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate...

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself....

When I write, my soul sings.

Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.

Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it’s utterly glorious.”National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk

Writers wake up the world.

Writers fly with imaginary wings.

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the...

No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer’s head. And then, if you want peace, you just...

Today I am amused, and I haven’t seen anyone yet.

In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at...

The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you’ve set. But if you’re writing about science, you have to first learn what you’re writing about.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Life is a cracked surface at best. Fiction is a nice edifice. / every word/sentence/paragraph gives a writer an opportunity to reinforce or deliberately crack the edifice by screwing with meaning, structure, grammar, the fourth...

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

She wrote poetry constantly; that was her “work”. She was a slow bleeder and she slaved over it for long, exhausting hours, and many a middle of a night I could hear her creaking around...

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.

Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It’s half past time to write”, I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.

(Live + Think) x Different = Write Different

Our words are often only vague, inadequate descriptions of our thoughts. Something gets lost in translation every time we try to express our thoughts in words. And when the other person hears our words, something...

Creating anything that never existed before is not sanity.

I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, ‘You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I’m not your...

Live first, write second.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,–making us think of funnier and funnier things.

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful… If you emphasize the truth-telling at...

I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition–about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside...

I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.

The Fiction defense. Sometimes I just need to use it.

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my...

Our willingness to write truthfully brings the story to life.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer – he steps forth like a...

Rewriting is the crucible where books are born.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

Traveled so far, and not yet have they come across anything of interest, he mused, except, of course, for that nest of goblins I managed to stir up. Indeed, his brother had always been a...

My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman’s paper called Milady’s Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few words for her “Husbands and Brothers” page on...

You can make anything by writing.

I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even,...

To write is to release the soul. So write. What right have we to leave a thing of such beauty bottled within ourselves?

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you...

Thought for the day: Twitter…140 character limit…must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers…

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.”(“The Castle”)

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like...

It’s impossible to be a good writer if you haven’t lived badly.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.