I’m very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you?...

Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself—and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences...

Because even among contrarians, I’m a contrarian. But all of this is just words of bronze, third place rhetoric. What do I really mean when I say we want to shock society into awareness? Do...

So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and...

Working together as a team helps build a cohesive organization.

I don’t write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

Take each day in your open palms and close your fists around it. This life is not done with you yet.

The joy of writing.The power of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand.

Read…

Everything I’ve written up to this point is crap. Now I’m going to write the real one

I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I’ll be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But...

I’ve written for the waste basket so often that we’ve become friends. He writes too, but it’s mostly garbage.

Half of what I write is garbage, but if I don’t write it down it decomposes in my head.

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.

I wrote a coded love note in my report for work. All the letters you need to read what I wrote are there—you just have to find them and rearrange the order until you’ve arrived...

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

It’s easy to see what to do once it’s already been done. The difficult time is before it’s to be done, and while you’re doing it. This is the difference between writing and editing.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

I am fun, friendly, and I know how to use the third comma in a list of three distinct items or things. In my book that makes me a better lover, because I wrote it....

I have an idea and a first line — and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of...

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom...

Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft.The metal point’s gone from my pen, there’s nothing left but the feather.Gutman:That may be true.But what can you do about it?Byron:Make a departure.Gutman:From yourself?Byron:From my...

Voglio dire che io fiuto le belle storie a chilometri di distanza. Quindi non tenti di nascondermene una. Sputi fuori, forza, e in cambio si guadagna una fetta di questo fantastico dolce con i buchi...

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

I wasn’t that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn’t write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I...

He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers....

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told,...

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.

Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction.

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s...

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

. . . I understand that I was writing (recording) as well as seeking to right (to rectify) the wrong, and now, as I retell the tale, I realize that ‘I am still at the...

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write...

I think a great many people would enjoy doing what I did, and that is why they enjoy books and movies (and even TV shows these days) that feature Torture and Dismemberment, etc., etc., etc.

[A] finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.

As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

I was going to write that all your clothes fall off, but figured you may have a problem with that. This was the second thing that came to mind.”(Karl and Elena)

I write with all my heart

The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind...

I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity...

Border crossing’ is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work — editing, writing, and painting. I’m interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the...

She was a very funny writer but also a very thoughtful one. She made writers think and she made readers think. She was constantly playing on the difference between God and the writer.

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough...

my high school must have been built over the mouth of hell.” There are certain things in life that are glorious, and they are glorious for everyone. There are more that are hard, and they...

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.