#writing

"Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses."

"Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life."

"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."

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

"You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love."

"You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ."

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

"He’s an indulgent sort of man……With a quick lip and a fierce tongue, the sort of tongue that draws you in with charm and words of praise, awkward silences and desperate worships."

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

"My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water."

"you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will."

"Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet."

"Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it -- if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure."

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

"If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."

"In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a)."

"You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me."

"No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from 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"

"A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them."