writing

"First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft."

"A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion."

"The Sacred and The Scared. Which of these two categories does your love fall under? I should write a love poem on a rolled-up scroll so you’d know which one categorizes mine."

"I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window."

"I’m more of a journalist than anyone in the mainstream media, and I write fiction. More than fiction, I write absurd nonsense surrealism, and my work has more truth."

"Write about the emotions you fear the most."

"There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil."

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you."

"Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning."

"Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading."

"You don’t make art out of good intentions."

"You’ll drown in my love story, if I ever write it using a fountain pen."

"I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it."

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible"

"In high school I used to write my love notes backwards, so she'd have to flip the paper upside-down to read it. Either that or read it in a mirror, so she can see herself as I see her, and see why I admire her."

"There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it."

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."

"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."

"I’m trying to translate what my cat says and put it in a book, but how many homonyms are there for meow?"