#writing

"All I need is a sheet of paperand something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down."

"Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it."

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."

"A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love."

"All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal."

"Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got."

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard."

"Then you should say what you mean,"the March Hare went on. "I do,"Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.""Not the same thing a bit!"said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat"is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!"

"Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake."

"Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design."

"A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!"

"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it."

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."

"[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)"

"Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?"

"Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever."

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

"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."

"After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."