#writing

"Good fiction creates its own reality."

"Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream."

"You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."("The Castle")"

"Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing."

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."

"I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message."

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

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

"The best kind of humans are the ones who stay."

"unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it"

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

"The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat."

"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins."

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

"When asked, "How do you write?"I invariably answer, "One word at a time,"and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope."

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

"When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble."

"People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life."

"I wasn't born to cook or clean,but to read and write,if you don't like me the way I am,then go fly a kite."

"She was a beautiful dreamer. The kind of girl, who kept her head in the clouds, loved above the stars and left regret beneath the earth she walked on."