I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must...

Write.” And do you know how long it takes to type with one hand while your other hand is shaking from holding a loaded Sig Sauer? Well, at least twice as long.

Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and...

It perhaps might be said–if any one dared–that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.

My writing looks like it’s ten steps behind my mind, and racing to always catch up.

Ideas take root at the oddest moments. Some grow into novels, the weaker ones wither and die.

In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s...

A writer edits his thoughts more thoroughly the more readers he has. You can tell I only have two readers, myself included.

There is tremendous life and personality in a name. It should be at least as agonized over as any character trait.

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes,...

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

As I build sentences, I roll them sometimes on my mouth to taste them as I write them. I have this emptying of the mind and the focusing on that single thing, that infinitesimal moment...

Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what...

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my...

I believe that only poetry counts … A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don’t know why...

Invisible prose only!” rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique...

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain – and there is no reason to think that those alternatives...

The closer one gets to the speed of light, the slower time travels. The exact thing is true when completing a book.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Each journey is different for every individual work and for every writer. The first error is never to begin; the second is never to...

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I write because there is nothing as joyful as writing, even when the writing is twisted and full of hate, the self-hate that makes writing not only possible but necessary. I hate myself, I hate...

‎If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone...

The best thing that can happen to me when I’m writing fiction is to lose sight of the fact that I’m writing at all. It’s as though I enter into a kind of trance. I...

The work, the pride in your work, the worth of the work itself…all those things faded away to the magic-lantern shades they really were when the pain got bad enough.

Are you keeping up your good studies at school and working as hard as you always did?

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I...

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and...

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: “What if?” and “What next?” (A third question, “What now?”, is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it’s more a cry than...

Oftentimes, people meet our writing before they meet us; our writing is our first impression.People read our résumés, cover letters, proposals, and emails, and that’s the basis on which we are judged first. If our...

We are writing in the age of stylish minimalism that in truth has become even more cautious because of word processing. Nowadays, creative writing students are underwriting rather than overdoing it.

Ah, yes. The dreaded goopy mouth.

when i write of you, my deari am holding youin the most exquisiteways.

I disagree with the advice of ‘write about what you know.’ Write about what you need to know, in an effort to understand.

Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily–as we shall...

If writing didn’t require thinking then we’d all be doing it.

Don’t judge it. Just write it. Don’t judge it. It’s not for you to judge it.Interview in Esquire Magazine 10/10

Rarely will I write indoors, even if it means getting wet during rain, or my hands numb in winter.

He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of...

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

Writers shouldn’t fear criticism. Instead, they should fear silence. Criticism is healthy. It gets people thinking about your work and, even better, it gets them talking and arguing. But as for silence — it is...

If you’re “one in a million”, and the world is full of seven billion people, that means there are seven thousand people just like you.

I don’t think there’s any deep psychological reason. It isn’t comparable, say, to America’s involvement with Vietnam and the emotional scars that that has left behind. A much more cogent way of looking at it...

I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve...

When you fail, get hurt, feel bad, but act on it! Everybody fails, but the ones who act are the ones who change the world!

I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I’d never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (“NEVER USE A...

Apparently, my hopes, dreams and aspirations were no match against my poor spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Contemplation + action = breakthrough