writing

"A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off"

"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."

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty."

"But dear, don’t be afraid of love it’s only magic."

"He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin."

"Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions."

"You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing that while not writing..."

"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."

"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any."

"The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't."

"My advice to aspiring writers is to read more, write more, and network more. More, more, and more. Then, after you've done all that, do it some more."

"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself)."

"After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."

"I’m up for the Julius Caesar Author of the Year Award this year. I’m tremendously proud, considering Caesar is the guy who burned down the Library of Alexandria."

"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter"

"Write to your heart’s content and by all means, have fun with your creation. It’s your moment to do absolutely anything within those pages."

"I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window."

"The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you’re going to see it blink black. That’s the moment to start writing."

"Books are for nothing but to inspire"