Yes, it’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to.

I would rather spend money on something, that fulfills me for eternity. Rather, than something that fulfills me for only an hour or two.

My characters don’t always know more than the reader does, because my readers get the best seat in Paper House.

I write because I’m free,because I can,because I will. I write because I must,because I’m breathing,because I’d go crazy otherwise,because it’s who I am.I write to make a statement,to share my thoughts,to discover myself,to express...

Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or...

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy...

…there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk...

In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that...

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Some of the best characters are the most flawed characters.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why...

If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It...

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s...

Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren’t flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is.

Why use long words when short ones will do? Not all readers have been to college or university.

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up...

It seems as if I can only thing if I write my journal, it just connects the part of my head that is busy doing things with the part that is busy thinking about everything...

I write across several genres. I’m a slut for words. I can’t keep it in my literary pants.

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances;...

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Writing starts with living.

Kuandika hadithi ni kitu kimoja. Kuweka kanuni za fasihi katika hadithi ni kitu kingine.

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)

I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your...

…if you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat – creativity is a rugged terrain…

I am swimming in a sea of words, attempting to keep my head above water.

Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That’s what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and...

i never begin my writings with talent. i begin them with strong emotions and liquor. they finish with talent.

I’m going to write a novel and get it published. I’m going to do it because writing a novel is worthwhile and because I have the talent to do it.I’m going to do it because...

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

A writer’s pen depreciates with every word that it writes. Whereas she appreciates with every word that she writes.

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie...

…ugly interlopers threaten to choke off your story, depriving it of much-needed nutrition, sunlight and water. Identify and cut those weeds – the life-sucking adverbs, the shade-killing descriptions that don’t move the story forward, the...

If you wish to be a writer, write.

We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we’ve jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it’s turned out to be our particular...

Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God...

If I knew what to doI’d do more than write a song for you

Poetry is more than a form of art. It’s a vibration and a pulsing heart. Whether it’s sour or whether it’s sweet. It can give you strength no one can defeat

As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall...

If you write in the Old World, and against it, your work must die, go missing, be veiled, before it can live the life for which it was destined in the New World.

But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable,...

Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.

Now, go, wirte it before them in a table and note it in a book, that it may be fore the time to come for ever and ever. Isiah 30:8

Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don’t yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.”[Ten rules for writing fiction (The...

Laughing in my ear is a muse amused by how I paint her whims on paper with silly words.

In the end, I will have to make a choice about how to tell my story….There has to be a moment of going forward, when all the possibilities are left behind.

You ever try holding, say, even a single chapter of a novel in your head? Consciously? All at once?