#writing

"The pen is mightier than the sword!"

"There are very few innocent sentences in writing."

"In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it."

"I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die."

"Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart."

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."

"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity."

"Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."

"The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated."

"Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey."

"Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination."

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself."

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

"Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination."

"If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last."

"It’s funny, for all it took was a broken heart and that alone was enough, enough for her to do everything she ever dreamed of."

"...at some point you need to stop looking out at others and start looking inward, at yourself, at your own accomplishments, at your own foibles, at your own successes and your own failures. It's only when you begin to look inward that you can begin to have an effect on those out there, the ones with the greedy eyes and outstretched hands."

"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any."

"Writing blooms flowers for mind, which last forever."