…I shall let [Anne] Wallace put the case herself, at what I think is necessary length:’As travel in general becomes physically easier, faster, and less expensive, more people want and are able to arrive at...

The problem with being an author in this modern world is such: computers break often; books don’t

…[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it...

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you,...

Research” is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. — It is not fair. — He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of...

I don’t profess any religion; I don’t think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec....

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)A good novel editor is invisible.

Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one’s living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit...

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

Imagination is the real magic that exists in this world. Look inwards, to see outwards. And capture it in writing.

I think ‘slow writing’ is the answer when the feeling of burn out threatens, something akin to the ‘slow food’ movement. Anxiety and panic are counterproductive to the creative process.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps...

Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I’ll sketch it in words…

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If...

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.

I count myself as one of the number of those who learn as they write and write as they learn.

A Tangle of Green Men”]

My brain is on fire!” to try to help these people understand that this is a headache that needs attention! That’s a metaphor, right? And you use it so that you can be understood. Now...

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing–and reading–is a solitary business. And it’s good to know...

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose...

You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than...

The hardest things to write are often the best things to read. And the most deserving to be written.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

Oh, you’re naughty, but I love the alluring image.”Then, I hope you’ll let me have a taste later.”He didn’t crowd her but allowed her to step back.She led him across the entranceway to a door...

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided...

The paper is my savior, the pen my blood, to words that shed my world.

As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and...

What really matters is:—1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.2. Always prefer the plain direct word to...

If I could find the right words, I’d say what the blue sky says.

Writing is like going underwater – thank you for being there when I come back up.

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.

My words will be my legacy, etched in heartfelt honesty upon the pages of time.

Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the...

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the...

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

There were the usual exhortations to purity – think of the novel not as your opportunity to get rich or famous but to wrestle, in your own way, with the titans of the form –...

Our books are the deepest glimpses into our souls, the most raw and real anybody will ever find us.

A masterpiece does not unfurl its wings immediately. It takes time. It will fly when it is ready.

Whoever has received knowledgeand eloquence in speech from Godshould not be silent or secretivebut demonstrate it willingly.When a great good is widely heard of,then, and only then, does it bloom,and when that good is praised...

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into...

Writing a novel is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces aren’t even fixed in shape. Yet, somehow, they all come together in the end to form the complete picture.

Writing is easy. Saying something that would make a difference is the task.

confessional.” She has been referred to, several times, as the first blogger. Whereas her writing does not confess much – it is much more spiritual memoir than anything, or perhaps something akin to a mystic’s...