#writing

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

"I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography."

"I'm not a big fan of inspiration. I'm too old to sit and wait for the muse to give me a little kiss... I write a lot, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or to write badly. I can alsways fix something weak and dull. But I can't fix a blank page."

"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."

"At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night."

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."

"Everyone should read, we say, but we act as if only those with special talent should write."

"When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again."

"I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."

"I used to be a bumper sticker kind of writer. Now I’m more developed, and my writing often takes up whole bumpers."

"Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living."

"If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity."

"And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it."

"Don't you know no one can escapethe power of creatures reaching outwith breath alone?"

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

"You don’t deserve my image in your head. You don’t deserve my memories in your chest."

"Burn worldly love, rub the ashes and make ink of it, make the heart the pen, the intellect the writer, write that which has no end or limit."

"My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal."

"All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal."