writing

"A word after a word after a word is power."

"[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start."(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975)"

"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

"You’re a mess, I confess, I despise you in the best kind of way."

"A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter."

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."

"In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!"(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)"

"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."

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good."

"Imagination is Everything!"

"Never put off writing until you are better at it."

"The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?"

"Writing feels safer somehow. I can catch myself before I say the wrong thing."

"I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity."

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society."

"I am the perfect version of me."

"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."