“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”
“Failure is the condiment that gives success it's flavour”
“Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.”
“All literature is gossip.”
“I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.”
“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”
“Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”
“One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.”
“The fortune of the man who sits also sits.”
“Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.”
“Nature is an experimenter.”
“Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers.”
“This story is about love, which means that it is also about hate.”
“I's not what a person says but what he does that reveals his true character.”
“Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.”
“The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH — which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied — prevails.”
“Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.”
“The true writer must write not the acceptable but the true.”
“I used to think I'd like to be a fireman — in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing.”
“If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions.”
“You cannot learn how to write drama without writing plays, putting [them] out in front of an audience, and getting humiliated.”
“'I wish' is a proclamation of something you're not go-ing to do. So rather than 'I wish,' if there's something you want, say, 'I will' or 'I intend to' or 'I'm going to' and do it. What's the worst thing that's gonna happen to you? You're going to fail? So what?”
“I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.”
“It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.”
“Writing a plot is one of the hardest things I ever learned how to do. It's just hard, because it's like playing with some unclean substance. And it is, because the unclean substance is your own consciousness.”
“Look at the scene and ask yourself "Is it dramatic? Is it essential? Does it advance the plot?" Answer truthfully. If the answer is "no" write it again or throw it out.”
“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”
“Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.”
“In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words - that's how long a novel is.”
“I used to like reading and you read enough books and you overflow and then you start writing.”
“You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.”
“I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.”
“Generally I start writing when I have even the smallest idea of how a book is going to go, because the physical process of writing itself keeps the mind active and focused on the job at hand.”
“Usually I write in about 5 drafts, but that simply means there are 5 definite times when I go in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the book.”
“There are times when the best writing you can do is to go for a walk or drive, a long drive is ideal.”
“I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it.”
“When people say "How do you write a book, how does it all happen?" I say, you line things up, and you line them up as actually as you possibly can, but sooner or later the book has got momentum and it's moving along under that momentum.”
“If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book.”
“I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.”
“Every writer has something to teach you, for good or ill. (And yes, you can learn from bad books as well as good ones — what not to do).”
“The most important thing for any aspiring writer, I think, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you’re trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything.”
“I end each chapter with a cliffhanger, resolution, a turn, a reveal, a new wrinkle ... something that will make you want to read the next chapter of that character.”
“It doesn't matter what the scene is. You can see it and you can hear it, but you're still staring at a blank screen. That's the nuts and bolts of writing.”
“I've never been a fast writer, and I've never been good with deadlines.”
“One of the big things that distinguishes the strongest fiction from writing that's perhaps without depth is a real understanding of what real human beings are like.”
“The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.”
“With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.”
“One of the big breakthroughs, I think for me, was reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, 'You must finish what you write.' I never had any problem with the first one, 'You must write' — I was writing since I was a kid. But I never finished what writing.”
“Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.”
“When I'm writing from a character's viewpoint, in essence I become that character; I share their thoughts, I see the world through their eyes and try to feel everything they feel.”
“Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.”
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
“I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.”
“Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.”
“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”
“Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.”
“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”
“We have all a better guide in ourselves if we would attend to it, than any other person could be.”
“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
“If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.”
“I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.”
“I write because I can't imagine not writing.”
“I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.”
“I always wanted to be a writer, but coming from a working-class background it was hard to feel I had that right.”
“The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”
“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
“Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.”
“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”
“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.”
“Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.”
“I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times.”
“A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.”
“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”
“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.”
“It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.”
“The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.”
“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”
“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”
“The trouble with a lot of people who try to write is they intellectualize about it. That comes after. The intellect is given to us by God to test things once they’re done, not to worry about things ahead of time.”
“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.”
“I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.”
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
“You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.”
“Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.”
“A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.”
“I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?”
“Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.”
“A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.”
“If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.”
“Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew.”
“Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.”
“I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.”
“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.”
“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”
“A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.”
“The best style is the style you don't notice.”
“You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.”
“Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.”
