I write because I am a writer, not because I want to get anything out of it.
I'm not much of a believer in the so-called character study; I think that in the end, the story should always be the boss.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everythi...
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
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...
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
I had come to the conclusion - based on experience - that the only real way of learning to write a novel was probably to write a novel.
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...
Writing is about truth, whether it be fiction or a school essay. Don't give in and 'fake it till you make it.' Criticize what upsets you.
V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned i...
Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will lear...
I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.
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...