The p’int of good writing is to know when to stop.

When I started writingI was a sick teenagedfuck inside who partlythought I was the newMarquis de Sade, a bodydoomed to communicatewith Satan who was us-ing my sickness as hishome away from home,and there’s your proof.

Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

I’m not gonna lie…sometimes this whole writing thing is a lonely business.

Dip your hands into life, scoop up memories, dreams, questions and ideas and weave them into stories.

Humor, drama, romance, whatever genre of entertainment you create or consume is only effective if it is challenging to your sensibilities. When the sexuality of seeing a woman’s ankles became trumped by her calf, society...

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who...

Journalism, to me, is just another drug – a free ride to scenes I’d probably miss if I stayed straight. But I’m neither a chemist nor an editor; all I do is take the pill...

I hate to be a nag, but you have got to read. Like most authors, I run creative writing workshops from time to time, and speak, when invited to writers’ circles and at summer schools,...

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Every moment offers a great opportunity to write.

I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at least 30 revisions.

You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.

Writing is like making love. Don’t worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

I am content when writing short stories.

There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper…

I read so I might live a thousand lives in a lifetime. I write to control the particulars in those lives.

A novelist’s job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something, when you need to be very intelligent indeed. The rest of the time,...

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

What fascinates me about writing is wrestling thought into reality and creating a new world that is forever.

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant...

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

I transform “Work” in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real “Work” – of writing.) for: the “Work” by which (it is said) we emerge from the great crises (love,...

I’m a Texas girl, with a California soul.

When the last dime is gone, I’ll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.

If you only enjoy the journey of writing, that’s reward enough.

You don’t have to take it out on my typewrite ya’ know. It’s not the machine’s fault that you can’t write. It’s a sin to do that to a good machine.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can’t write, can surely review.

When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her...

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about...

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

It was only after two years’ work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a...

We do not like the truth because it is simple, we do not want the truth because it is hard, and we do not trust the truth because it is free. Perhaps because many are...

An idea is a gift, a finished project is turning that gift into a book by making yourself write even when you don’t want to. There is no such thing as a block of time...

I tell students, when in doubt, to title their story after the smallest concrete object in their story. I warn them off plays on words, (‘The Rent Also Rises’–no; ‘Life in My Cat House’–no) and...

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

But I don’t want to write my own fiction,’ Cath said, as emphatically as she could. ‘I don’t want to write my own characters or my own worlds — I don’t care about them. ....

Active critical reflection is necessary in every aspect of our teaching, not only in front of a class. We must try to reevaluate our own values and experiences as they relate to our teaching. Our...

Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention…

The writer’s life requires courage, patience, empathy, openness. It requires the ability to be alone with oneself. Gentle with oneself. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks.

Don’t resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.

The sky never falls with the rain. It is never weighed down by all that it carries. It takes all of its anchorsand turns them into stars. Learn from this.

When you’re a sportswriter, you learn how to use your imagination and to flex your literary muscle, because it’s the same game played over and over again. There’s nothing unique or marvelous. It’s not an...

I speak, I speak, and truth at that. Writers are a curious breed: brooding, fickle, alternately loving and hating their work—and each other. You’re my friend? Don’t pick up that pen!

The scene is a writer’s study, shabby, drafty but tax-deductible. The writer is reading the last hundred pages of his work in progress. For the past fifty or so, a kind of slow terror has...

I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow. I read too much and write too little,...

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

I type as fast as a ten-legged man who just had eight legs chopped off runs.

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

Home. The word circled comfortably in my mouth like bubble gum, swished around sweetly soft and satisfying. Home. Try saying it aloud to yourself. Home. Isn’t it like taking a bite of something lovely? If...