I have recommended in my writings the study of civic virtues, without which there is no redemption. I have written likewise (and repeat my words) that reforms, to be beneficial, must come from above, that those which come from below are irregularly g...
I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: 'Oh, you're working on it right now?'
I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.
If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and ...
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which ca...
I was successful and I enjoyed modeling, but it got to a point where I felt like I had 'been there, done that.' I wanted something that would inspire me and challenge me. I needed something that required more creativity. I started writing and I start...
Without a doubt, if I had it to do all over again, I would do whatever it takes to be a one-person studio. You need to learn how to write so you can control the material. If you own the material, you can do it all.
I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of...
If I had stayed purely a horror writer or thriller writer, I might have more of a presence in those particular genres, and I'd certainly have more individual titles to market, since it's much easier to write pure genre fiction than it is to create so...
I went to Colby College in Waterville, ME and did picture it when I was writing 'Cum Laude.' So many of the physical details were included, like the loop where people jogged. The story of the chapel is also borrowed from Colby... but the students and...
Many fantasy novels - 'Lord of the Rings', for instance, or 'Lavondyss' by Robert Holdstock - are beautifully written. Geoff Ryman's 'The Child Garden' is exquisite and utterly beguiling. Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy is an astonishing piece o...
You can't sing about the same things as you did when you were 20; it would be ridiculous to sing about, I don't know, being in the quad. You can't really write about mortgage payments or stuff like that... but you can talk about 'let's make the world...
I think it's silly for anyone to think you could write under the influence, but if they'd like to think that, I'd like to keep the legend alive. Maybe I was under the influence when I wrote Jesus' Son and I just didn't know it.
Anybody who sits down to write, and they think 'thriller,' maybe shouldn't be thinking that way. Maybe we should be thinking 'novel,' maybe 'thriller' way in the background, but that these are real people to whom things are happening. It just happens...
Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and sta...
Ever since I was 7 years old, I was writing. I remember being in the basement of my house, this dank, horrible basement, putting on plays with not-very-willing participants, and I would promise kids in the neighborhood that I'd play Nintendo 64 with ...
Mistress Creation keeps calling my name... i long for her, and she, for me... we will be reunited soon. In the interim, i bide my time dreaming of her, writing about her and stretching her across the vast landscape of my imagination. "Soon", i whispe...
I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on ...
I really found this campaign odious. I couldn't get up for it. The quality of the candidates and the campaign, I just found the whole thing second-rate. I didn't know how to explain to my granddaughter that I was spending my dotage writing about Al G...
I believe in hope, in what is something called ”radical hope.” I believe there is hope for all of us, even amid the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probaby. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to buld a fir...
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.
