writing

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."

"You are what you write."

"The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?"

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

"Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form."

"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."

"Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions."(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)"

"I am a man"he told her, "and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone woman, and bring me something brown."

"He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it."

"So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want."

"Here's a haiku/palindrome I wrote called, "Obsession."Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob"

"All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful."

"you must not come lightly to the blank page."

"Hello, I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman."

"My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything."

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."

"All the ideas in the universe can be described by words. Therefore, if you simply take all the words and rearrange them randomly enough times, you’re bound to hit upon at least a few great ideas eventually. Sausage donkey swallows flying guillotine, my love assembly line."

"Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is interesting."

"As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?"

"When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?"Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?"You don't get ideas. Ideas get you."