In order to write about life first you must live it.
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Nothing can save you except writing. It keeps the walls from failing.
Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.
That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.
I write to discover what I know.
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.
There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.
Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.
I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
It’s the writing that teaches you.