#writing

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

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

"The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor."

"When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?"Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?"You don't get ideas. Ideas get you."

"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."

"and sometimes I sitdown at my typewriterand I thinknot of someonecause there isn't anyoneto thinkabout and i wonderis it worth it"

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."

"I don't trust men everybody likes. Being nice isn't the same as being good."

"… and the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you."

"You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted."

"Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously."

"I never met a word I didn't love"

"With writing, we have second chances."

"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story."

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

"Writing is both mask and unveiling."

"I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography."

"The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art."

"God pity the poor novelist."

"...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing."