writing

"Fiction should be a place of lollipops and escape. Real life is depressing enough--I, for one, don't want to read about make believe misery, too."

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

"Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living."

"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."

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

"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."

"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day."

"Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one."

"The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you’re going to see it blink black. That’s the moment to start writing."

"The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows."

"Words are magic. They have the power to hurt and to heal, and even withholding them has the power to hurt and to heal. What else has as much potency in its absence and can do without doing? What I mean is, even when you don’t say anything, you are communicating as effectively as if you’d spoken."

"If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks."

"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent."

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

"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it."

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."