#writing

"You’ve gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you’re studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back."

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

"Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done."

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."

"A long list of propositions does not necessarily make a coherent argument"

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"

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

"It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it."

"Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects."

"I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.[Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]"

"My definition of dictionary can’t be found in the dictionary. Dictionary—A linguistic prison, confining words to well-defined cells, with little chance of parole."

"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing."

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

"All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea."

"I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary"sins --The other kind don't 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."

"Ink, a Drug."

"This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."

"Imagination is what you do with your inspiration."