#writing

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

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."

"No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside."

"I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say."

"I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe."

"I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary"sins --The other kind don't matter."

"I don't teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. I teach the life. The odd thing is most of the things that stop an inexperienced writer are so far from the truth as to be nearly beside the point. When you feel glosbal doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don't have any doubt."

"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."

"The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink."

"For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

"I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer."

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

"You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write."

"When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off."

"Being a writer is a good, good thing."

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

"Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing."

"In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it."

"Its dark and I’m reading my scars because our moments remind me of where I should be."

"There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through."