I had no idea that Barack Obama curses before public speaking. I think I know at whom he curses before going on stage. I was as shocked Read More...
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.
I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.
When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”
Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

























