#writers

"Life is magic."

"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."

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

"The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented."

"Like a flower, feel yourself rise above and begin to open."

"Don't be indifferent about any random idea that occurs to you, because each and every idea is for a particular purpose. it may not be beneficial to you, but can be what others are craving for"

"Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft."

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]"

"It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought."

"I do not love men: I love what devours them."

"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."

"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?"

"Whatever you do, let it be lovely."

"If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf."

"Her words are her wings. She's flying."

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

"You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]"

"Drizzle happiness wherever you go."

"A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."

"The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much."