writing

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

"One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke."

"There is no such thing as an "aspiring writer". You are a writer. Period."

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

"I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

"Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love."

"هو لا يفهم أن نفسيتي كإناء من "الكريستال"الرقيق تكفيه نقرة جافة ليتصدع إلى الأبد. لا، هو لا يفهم أن جهود حياته بأكملها لن تعيد الإناء إلى نقاءه الأصلي."

"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling."

"I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled."

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."

"The words get easier the moment you stop fearing them."

"I used to be a bumper sticker kind of writer. Now I’m more developed, and my writing often takes up whole bumpers."

"But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"

"People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself."

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."

"The story is always better than your ability to write it."

"Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything."

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."

"The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness."