#writing

"You can cover a great deal of country in books."

"A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget."

"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else."

"To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength."

"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money."

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public."

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency,"or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery."

"A writer's goal is to weave the ordinary into fine silk and the truly extraordinary into diaphanous clarity ..."

"Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism."

"I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God's enemy."

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"

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

"If Pavlov tested his cat he would have failed."

"Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

"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."

"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter."

"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it."

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."