#writing

"We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it."

"If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks."

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."

"All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland."

"I bleed ink for her, because her name is written on my heart. She’s the author of all the love I have to give."

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

"The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome"doubt."

"and sometimes I sitdown at my typewriterand I thinknot of someonecause there isn't anyoneto thinkabout and i wonderis it worth it"

"I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites."

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

"You do what you were made to do. Some of us were made to read and write. Thanks be to God."

"And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it."

"Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written."

"How to Write a PoemCatch the airaround the butterfly."

"Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives."

"She writes things with her movements that I for the life of me could never write with a pen."

"When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly."

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."

"… and the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you."

"As a fiction writer, let me make it up, and let me make it up to you. I’ll pen our love story, if you’ll be my co-author."