writing

"Writing is both mask and unveiling."

"I felt like poisoning a monk."

"A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."

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

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency,"or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery."

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one."

"If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity."

"Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works."

"I know how you feel because I’ve been there too. I’ve hated and I’ve loved. I’ve seen my demons root and crawl and my angels branch and soar. I've died within myself and lived a thousand different lives. I too fight the same war and I too am drowning in the puddles of self-consciousness this world created."

"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."

"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."

"Half of what I write is garbage, but if I don't write it down it decomposes in my head."

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."

"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."

"She needed the chaos within her in order to discover the extraordinary no man could ever reach."

"It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to."

"If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings."

"Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone."