#writing

"Why write stories? To join the conversation."

"She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up."

"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.."

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."

"Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey."

"It has been often said that writing is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. In my experience, this is true. But, in my opinion, it is useless without that 1 percent. It's like an engine without fuel -- can't get anywhere without it. Or like a lighthouse without a light on top -- doesn't guide anyone in to home or safe harbor."

"Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please."

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves."

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

"She doesn't quite chop his head off.She makes a Pez dispenser out of him."

"Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up."

"To love is to soar in the wild unexpectedly."

"The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement."

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."

"Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before."

"A pen, a piece of white paper, and an idea can create a new you."

"A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

"If there's a will, there's a way!I feel larger than LIFE--and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders....as my fingers tap on my computer late into the night.."