You can only write well, what you have experienced.
If you are alone, tell some stories to yourself. This is a different kind of pleasure and it has, indeed, its reward. I have tasted a little of everything, and I have truly never enjoyed anything more...
How can you write if you can't cry?
Writing well means never having to say, "I guess you had to be there.
The public wants work which flatters its illusions.
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...
How are you supposed to know what to read next? This is the question that keeps us up at night, so at Day One our mission is to feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers like you...
Then, as now, archaelogists and writers ventured where others feared to tread.
That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them
As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and...
An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrep...
A good writer is basically a story-teller not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
Now as through this world I ramble I see lots of funny men Some rob you with a six gun Some with a fountain pen.
He claimed his modest share of the general foolishness of the human race.
The most lasting reputation I have is for an almost ferocious aggressiveness when in fact I am amiable indulgent affectionate shy and rather timid at heart.
It is in the hard rockpile labour of seeking to win hold or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing comes in.
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world.