#writing

"I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity."

"...(W)here there's drama, there's crap."

"Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants.The market is fickle; the soul is eternal'."

"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

". . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them."

"Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor."

"I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]"

"Every writer I know has trouble writing."

"All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate."

"The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly."

"People always ask me if I’m into sports, and I say, “Well, isn’t writing a sport? If you’re doing it right, and you have a deadline, you should be sweating."

"I had to learn to live without you and I couldn't make sense of it, because I left so much of me inside of you."

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."

"What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else."

"If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity."

"I need you because I know I deserve you but let me fall in love with you one last time before I let go. So I can remember the beautiful imperfection that rattled my bones."

"All novels are sequels; influence is bliss."

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

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."

"Early on I set out to write the next Great American Novel, and then later on I set out the silverware and enjoyed my dinner in silence."