#writing

"Sleep frees our imaginations from the confines of its imprisonment. Last night I dreamt of penguins"

"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."

"You can cover a great deal of country in books."

"No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place."

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

"One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke."

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

"Writers write while dreamers procastinate."

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

"it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply."

"The Sacred and The Scared. Which of these two categories does your love fall under? I should write a love poem on a rolled-up scroll so you’d know which one categorizes mine."

"If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write."

"And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is."

"When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off."

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

"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."

"Why write stories? To join the conversation."

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."