#writing

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"

"The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky."

"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."

"Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions."

"You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love."

"Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word."

"I often fantasize about torturing some of the lazier letters of the alphabet, like C, U, and E, because together they only manage to accomplish as much as the solitary letter Q."

"You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."

"Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels."

"If I’m going to write a book every American will want to read, it’s got to have lots of pictures. Those pictures must also move, and all the words in the book must be spoken and available audibly for all the readers to hear as they watch."

"You have to find your own shtick. A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own."

"There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets."

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."

"There is a long time in me between knowing and telling."

"Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river."

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."

"Writing is both mask and unveiling."

"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."

"She writes things with her movements that I for the life of me could never write with a pen."

"A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket."