#writing

"It has been often said that writing is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. In my experience, this is true. But, in my opinion, it is useless without that 1 percent. It's like an engine without fuel -- can't get anywhere without it. Or like a lighthouse without a light on top -- doesn't guide anyone in to home or safe harbor."

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way."

"You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road."

"There is creative reading as well as creative writing."

"If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning..."

"I type on my keyboard like I’m Beethoven on the piano. My words may be silent in the air, but they ring as music in my mind while I write."

"The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?"

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

"When asked, "How do you write?"I invariably answer, "One word at a time,"and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope."

"It has often been saidthere’s so much to be read,you never can cramall those words in your head.So the writer who breedsmore words than he needsis making a chorefor the reader who reads.That's why my belief isthe briefer the brief is,the greater the sighof the reader's relief is.And that's why your bookshave such power and strength.You publish with shorth!(Shorth is better than length.)"

"I arrived, I saw humans and I saw through their faces. Nothing ever changes but the light in their eyes. For I too have buried my demons today, without knowing what might remain beneath the face of tomorrow."

"Hello, I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman."

"Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time."

"Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear."

"I think I’m mouth blind and that’s why all food tastes bland. The only things that have any flavor are the words I love you."

"People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself."

"No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."

"There is a long time in me between knowing and telling."

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."

"I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker."