#writing

"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."

"I believe in hope, in what is something called ”radical hope.” I believe there is hope for all of us, even amid the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probaby. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to buld a fire in the darkness.r"

"Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion."

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one."

"There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."

"File under "Hard Truths": the creative muse is fiction. If you sit around waiting for the right moment to create, you will die waiting."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"Spelling Bees are useless and unnecessary competitions. Before Microsoft Word and Google, Spelling Bees had value, but now they are all superflewus."

"Excuse me, I feel interrupted and I think I've overdose from the idea of loving you."

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

"Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."

"It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written."

"I don't think all writers are sad, she said.I think it's the other way around—all sad people write."

"Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called."

"The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you’re going to see it blink black. That’s the moment to start writing."

"Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read."

"Words are magic. They have the power to hurt and to heal, and even withholding them has the power to hurt and to heal. What else has as much potency in its absence and can do without doing? What I mean is, even when you don’t say anything, you are communicating as effectively as if you’d spoken."

"Write because you love to write."

"Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."