writing

"I bet there are a lot of women out there who want to sleep with a guy who reads. And being the head of the reading foundation, I’m very well endowed."

"This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be."

"A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger."

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."

"We swallowed the chaos because we knew we didn't want to be ordinary."

"The Sacred and The Scared. Which of these two categories does your love fall under? I should write a love poem on a rolled-up scroll so you’d know which one categorizes mine."

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

"And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is."

"You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?"

"I wasn't born to cook or clean,but to read and write,if you don't like me the way I am,then go fly a kite."

"The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say."

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"

"I sat down and tried to write a story."Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight."That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him."

"The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."

"It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required."

"And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!"

"Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written."

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."