We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there’s an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn’t for our longing for these things, I doubt...

Well, for instance, why does everything always have to be written from the point of view of a human being? Why not write from the point of view of a cat? Or a tree?

We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand....

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

We don’t know history. We only know what has been written about it.

From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to...

In my imagination, the Editor meditated in a mountain-cave, espoused the rules of grammar, and frowned upon speculative fiction.

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You can’t have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the...

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Those who can’t, and can’t teach, translate.(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might...

Each word was shaped with certainty, and I felt, more strongly than ever before in my life, that I had at last found my true path. I knew the story would change as I told...

Paper is more patient than man.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.

Not everything can stand the test of time, but a story can.

When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies – and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the...

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.

Miss Abigail, I want to be an author because writers know when a person is lonely. I mean, when Molly read me some books, those writers reached out and said, Look Gideon, we know about...

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.

The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It’s technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day–a way of relating.

History, writing, infect after a time a man’s sense of himself…

I have a huge and savage conscience that won’t let me get away with things.

As long as one person reads the bullshit I put on paper, and likes it, i’ll keep writing.

I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an’ stuff like that, too; not just word writin’. My ol’ man’ll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa’s gonna...

Your understanding and interpretation of [a novel] is undoubtedly unique…and that is the real beauty of the relationship that joins readers, books and writers together in a literary trinity—a bookish triumvirate.

Reading feeds the soul, writing nourishes it!

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room...

W jakimś sensie takie osoby jak ona, te, które władają piórem, bywają niebezpieczne. Narzuca się od razu podejrzenie fałszu – że taka osoba nie jest sobą, tylko okiem, które bezustannie patrzy, a to, co widzi,...

Many people can and have written books, but many have nothing to say.

You dive deeper, you strip away the cleverness and the words become more important than your ego and that’s when you know it’s real, when it’s good.

Mrs. Landingham, does the President have free time this morning? The President has nothing but free time, Toby. Right now he’s in the residence eating Cheerios and enjoying Regis and Kathie Lee. Should I get...

The only man she ever loved. And hated.

How do you paint a writer’s block?Just fill it with fifty shades of black.

I…have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be...

That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure—the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the...

One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by...

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop…suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

Feed your creative mind.Feed your joyful, selfless heart.Feed your soul to grow.Feed with books, music, painting or arts,Feed with your special favorite passion you joyfully share near or far apart.

As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly,...

There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.

I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume—and no farther than to my first day’s...

Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight….what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], “Tell your daughter three things.” Tell her to read…Tell...

You’ve gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you’re studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe...

I can taste fear, and lies, on a man’s skin, Cavrax.” The Master Priest whispered, watching the large pulse on the cleric’s neck beat like a caged thing begging for release. “You’re lying to me.

The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part,...

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.