#writing

"I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos."

"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."

"Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done."

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you."

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate."

"You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect."

"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."

"I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live."

"What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written."

"nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing."

"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."

"writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all"

"Hello, I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman."

"Ink, a Drug."

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

"I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing."

"Writing is both mask and unveiling."

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs."[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977]"