#writing

"Your current circumstances are part of your redemption story He is writing."

"Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds."

"writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all"

"A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love."

"not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol."

"The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."

"The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't."

"I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen."

"Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul."

"The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it."

"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

"Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes."

"Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible."

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

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

"I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know."

"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."

"I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book."

"Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it."