The way we learn to write is the way we learn to talk: We listen to others and start mimicking speech, and that's how we come to become speakers. Writers you admire, you admire the way they plot, you admire the way they create a character, you admire...
My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten, and I didn't live with him after that, though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer; I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It oc...
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet...
I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. ...
Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help. Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you? Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing. Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you cre...
Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm ju...
A whistling girl and a crowing hen never came to a good end.
Greater qualities are needed to baer good fortune than bad.
In bad luck, hold out; in good luck, hold in.
A book is a good friend when it lays bare the errors of the past.
Learn good manners from those who don't have them.
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
Good luck comes in slender currents, misfortune in a rolling tide.
You can give a piece of advice, but not good luck along with that.
Hell is paved with good intentions, roofed in with lost opportunities.
Don't praise my good fortune before I'm dead and buried.
Good news always comes from far away.
Parents can give their children everything except good luck.
One ounce of good luck is better than a ton of brains.
This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no...
Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think that that’s—that that’s it. That that’s the point, that that’s the goal, you know? And that’s th...
