#on-writing

"Write what should not be forgotten."

"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them."

"I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read."

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession."

"And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word."

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."

"The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"

"Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?"

"You can fix anything but a blank page."

"A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise."

"You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it."

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"

"Write to your fear."

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

"O for a Muse of fire, that would ascendThe brightest heaven of invention!"

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."

"Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it."

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