writing

"One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death."

"Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them."

"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."

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"

"As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split."

"The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing."

"How can you write if you can't cry?"

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

"You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."

"The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience."

"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."

"You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."("The Castle")"

"Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written."

"Using my nipples as bait, I went fishing for compliments. I got a few bites, but nothing to write about in Field & Stream."

"If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done."

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."

"Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot."

"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way."

"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."

"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."