I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write.
Life. Is a sentence, therein, weave your story toward freedom.
If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut ou...
What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.
Grab a pen and your turf will have no limits.
Make your skin as thick as you are able to, for your career. Keep it as thin as you can tolerate, for your art.
Rejection is part of the game. Or rather, rejection is part of the profession. A profession which at times can feel like a game.
Someone asked me, 'How do you write a book?' I said, 'I live with a pen in one hand.
I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.
Writing is a blurred mirror. Sometimes we work harder to see how we are reflected, but often we avert our gaze from the shadowy image.
I wear the writer pants in the family.
I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always...
Confession: I don't want to be one of my characters. I'm mean to them sometimes. Really mean.
The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.
Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never...
As a naturally shy person, I loved the anonymity of writing before my career took off. I loved how my stories didn't care about my weight. When I started publishing that writing, I loved that, to my r...
On the way home, I saw a fist fight between an adverb and a pair of parentheses.I kept on walking.
Writing is transcendental. It is a form of expression, a form of art that you can take anywhere. That you can do anywhere. It poses the deepest questions in the universe. It generates emotion. It elic...
Becoming a writer does not mean words will suddenly flow with perfection from your pen. It takes hard work, rejection, and the willingness to lay everything inside you out for the world to see.
Writing a book is burning your brain to enlighten another man's mind