I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).
You have to stop and freeze the moment," he told me I had told her. "You have to make yourself remember by repeating it in your head over and over. You have to write to preserve your sanity.
I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.
I do no damage. This is damage, this.” He picked up a paper from Camille’s desk. “I can’t read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself.
But I had to kill you, because the only other possible ending was us doing it, which I wasn't really emotionally ready to write about at ten.' 'Fair enough,' I say. 'But in the revision, I want to get some action.
Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.
In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and ...
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.
An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.
All right, you caught me. I'm secretly obsessed with you and spend all my free time writing about you in my journal. 'Dear Diary, today Will was an ass for the 467th day in a row. He's so dreamy
Glorious sex that poets write about and that angels blow their trumpets over absolutely requires the participants to be fully engaged and fully witnessing the entire event!
Write down 10 things you would do in your life if you had absolutely no fear. Then pick one of them and do it.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.
Some people work to live, and other people live to work. Then some people, like me, are both unemployed and alive (at least at the time of this writing).
The greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite.
If I ever see an alien fishing in Scotland, and witness it catching the Loch Ness Monster, I’d probably assume the world would want me to write a poem about the event, rather than take pictures of it.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but is 400% less valuable, because a picture only captures one of the senses—sight. However, words can describe the other four senses, making writing four times more potent than photography.
I’ll bet if I write a sentence and mention the word “edit,” people will slow down and scour my words for errors. Did it wrok?
Even if there were only seventeen syllables left in the universe, I still don’t think The Mythical Mr. Boo would write a haiku. Especially not if those syllables were groups of “oh,” “no,” “ah,” “ouch,” “ugh,” “eek,” and “...
When I write I am an avocado, and in a team sport setting, I am guacamole. And not to sour cream on your dreams, but with my love life, I am a nacho.
When I write... I am in the fond arms of a childhood friend upon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawings of my woes.
