#writing

"Its dark and I’m reading my scars because our moments remind me of where I should be."

"...Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?"

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

"Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart."

"Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone."

"The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing."

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

"First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."

"Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure."

"You’re not a bad person, you’re just a little bit different and I’m a sucker for that."

"Read as widely and as deeply as you can. You have to be a reader before you can be a writer."

"Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow."

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

"Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well."

"The first draft of anything is shit."

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

"Write because you love to write."

"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."

"Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world."