Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
If I stop writing I am dead. And that’s the only way I’ll stop: dead.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.
Write as well as you can and finish what you start.
The only kind of writing is rewriting.
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.
Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.
Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
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.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.
Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.
Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.
You fail only if you stop writing.
If you write a hundred short stories and they’re all bad, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You fail only if you stop writing.
I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.