The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.
Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a...
Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.
Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our...
Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everythi...
Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.
Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.
Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
My own experience is that once a story has been written one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything...
I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
There is today an extraordinary interest with the data of modern experience per se. Our absorption in our contemporary historical state is very high right now. It's not altogether unlike a similar sit...
The truth is we've not really developed a fiction that can accommodate the full tumult the zaniness and crazed quality of modern experience.
Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.
Make'em laugh make 'em cry make 'em wait.
Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.
I am as disillusioned with the number of likes for one's posts on social networking sites as I am with the number of followers in one's social network. A great number of people liking your work does n...
It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.
Falling in love with a writer is a dangerous thing, isn't it? The only thing you get out of it sometimes is immortality.