#writing

"A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"And ever, as the story drainedThe wells of fancy dry,And faintly strove that weary oneTo put the subject by,"The rest next time--""It is next time!"The Happy voice cry.Thus grew the tale of Wonderland"

"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter."

"Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river."

"Create a guidebook of creative dreamsYou can use a blank book or just blank paper clipped together. Put photographs or scraps from magazines in that represent your creative dreams. Draw, scribble, or paint in between the images. Make a list of creative dreams you've thought of or admire in others."

"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any."

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

"I want to write a poem about "Truth,""Honor,""Dignity,"and whether the toilet paper should roll over or under when you pull on it."

"Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon."

"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."

"Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever."

"Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it."

"A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off"

"Language imparts identity, meaning, and perspective to our human condition. Writers are either polluters or part of the cleanup."

"My pen shall heal, not hurt."

"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."

"You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect."

"Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write."

"Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called."

"If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read."