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.
The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.



























