#writing

"Whoever has received knowledgeand eloquence in speech from Godshould not be silent or secretivebut demonstrate it willingly.When a great good is widely heard of,then, and only then, does it bloom,and when that good is praised by man,it has spread its blossoms."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.."

"As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split."

"I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden."

"To become successful, one must put themselves in the paths of giants!"

"Writing is the voices inside our heads, our minds, the creativity that exists for us to, from nothing, create alternate worlds, manipulate a personality or to introduce a new kind of love, a new kind of hate or pain or happiness or wonder or... anything we want. Through words, we can do, we can be anything we want."

"I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen."

"My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's."

"Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be."

"It is dark. You cannot see. Only the hint of stars out the broken window. And a voice as old as the Snake from the Garden whispers, 'I will hold your hand."

"A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it."

"Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay."

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself."

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."

"Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce."

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

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

"Without living, how can you know? Without knowing, how can you speak?"

"Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing."

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."