If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.
In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or w...
One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; gi...
It's amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.
All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each s...
Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back i...
It's the Abstract Expressionist approach to publishing. Throw ink at paper. Hope for pattern to emerge.
For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to the mood, in her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would n...
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Write what should not be forgotten.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
You can fix anything but a blank page.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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