Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or wri...
I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a gr...
He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What!" he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats po...
Janna knew - Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, mi...
If suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you no longer live, I shall live on. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall live on. For where a man has no voice, there, my voice. Where blacks are beaten, I cannot be dead. When my br...
If you put it as 'complex nervous systems' it sounds pretty deflationary. What's so special about a complex nervous system? But of course, that complex nervous system allows you to do calculus. It allows you to do astrophysics… to write poetry... t...
This empty kitchen's where I'd while away the hours Just next to my old chair You'd usually have some flowers The shelves of books Even the picture hooks Everything is gone But my heart is hanging on If this old neighborhood Survived us both alright ...
My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book--everything I like--trying to evoke some of the decadence… Vampires are a high-class monster...
The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and though...
Hannibal Lecter: You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one genera...
Dorothy Vallens: You think I'm crazy don't you? [pauses] Dorothy Vallens: I want you to stay. Don't hate me. Jeffrey Beaumont: I sure don't hate you. Dorothy Vallens: I'm not crazy. [pauses] Dorothy Vallens: I know the difference between right and wr...
Steve Rogers: Attention all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, this is Steve Rogers. You're heard a lot about me over the last few days. Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time to tell the truth. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not what we thought it ...
Tony Wendice: How do you go about writing a detective story? Mark Halliday: Well, you forget detection and concentrate on crime. Crime's the thing. And then you imagine you're going to steal something or murder somebody. Tony Wendice: Oh, is that how...
[first lines] Brian Taylor: I am the police, and I'm here to arrest you. You've broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathies, no...
Virginia Woolf: Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel I can't go through another one of these terrible times and I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate so I am doing what seems to be the best thing...
Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it. Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is? Dwayne: He's the guy you teach. Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real ...
Burt Hadley: Oh shit. This is the wrong room. You're in 304 now. I'm sorry. I fucked up. Leonard Shelby: This is not my room? Burt Hadley: No, come on, let's go. Leonard Shelby: Why is this my handwriting? Burt Hadley: ...This was your room, but now ...
[last lines] Voice of Adso as an Old Man: I have never regretted my decision, for I learned from my master much that was wise and good and true. When at last we parted company, he presented me with his eyeglasses. I was still young - he said - but so...
Count Rugen: [admiring his torture contraption] Beautiful isn't it? It took me half a lifetime to invent it. I'm sure you've discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. Presently I'm writing the definitive work on the subject, so I want you to b...
[first lines] Charlie: [voice-over] Dear Friend. I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who I am. I don't want y...
[Hunt enters Lauda's garage and sees the extent of the burn injuries to his head] Niki Lauda: It's that bad, huh? James Hunt: [Shrugs] No. Niki Lauda: In hospital, I asked them straight, no bullshit, how bad my appearance would be. They said in time,...
