#writing

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."

"I never met a word I didn't love"

"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon."

"Sometimes the most beautiful people are beautifully broken."

"A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen."

"I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer."

"I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live."

"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning."

"I curse in cursive. It's hard to read and harder take. But if you take it black, like coffee, then at least it may wake you up to the realities of life."

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

"When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer."

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."

"You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer."

"When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women"

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

"I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]"

"All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate."

"Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love."

"What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us."

"I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them."