writing

"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply."

"There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't."

"Instead of reciting her an original love poem using words, I think I’ll use my tongue to more creatively explore the deepest parts of her."

"I go on writing so that I will always have something to read."

"I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive."

"Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth."

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."

"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter."

"You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?"I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two, I said. To myself."

"Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."

"From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short."

"To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment."

"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke."

"Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."

"Cheekbones that cut like ice and eyes like liquid scotch. Loren Hale is an alcoholic beverage and he doesn't even know it."

"Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word."

"I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM."

"Imagination is Everything!"

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."

"In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood."