writing

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."

"I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."

"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."

"I can read lips. Especially if they have words tattooed on them."

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

"If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen."

"The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly."

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

"And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is."

"Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery."

"I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive."

"The main thing is to writefor the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lustthat imagines its haven like your hands at nightdreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.Take off from here."

"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works."

"Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up."

"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."

"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."

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

"…when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence…in love, never settle…value yourself first and this will help you to value others…life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest…everyone in the world is different, and that’s ok…"

"Iniisip ni Lucas kung gaano kalaki ang kapangyarihan ng isang writer. Sa pamamagitan ng mga salita ay kaya niyang patigilin ang dyip, ilabas ang lihim ng mga pasahero, pabuhusin ang ulan upang linisin ang mga basura sa palibot, ikulong ang mga opisyal na corrupt at tuluyang i-delete sa bansa ang kahirapan."

"But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, "alright sucker, now what?"