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...
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
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.
Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

























