writing

"Early on I set out to write the next Great American Novel, and then later on I set out the silverware and enjoyed my dinner in silence."

"Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to."

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

"Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light."

"Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god."

"A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge."

"A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been."

"People tell me I look like my father. I've never seen my dad, so does that mean I look invisible?"

"Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough."

"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."

"The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement."

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

"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."

"The story is always better than your ability to write it."

"Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right."

"A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget."

"I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up.And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring."

"Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural."

"I need you because I know I deserve you but let me fall in love with you one last time before I let go. So I can remember the beautiful imperfection that rattled my bones."

"The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad"but "good vs. good."