You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who w...
I write. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks. As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury ...
The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the s...
If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in bea...
Henry Miller, Genet, Sade, Bataille are really important writers for me and I love them, but I feel often they don’t love me, you know? I feel I always have to wrap my head around the way the girl is treated in the works, and the way the woman writ...
The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't se...
Commenting acidly on a writer whom I perhaps too naively admired, my old classics teacher put on his best sneer to ask: 'Wouldn't you say, Hitchens, that his writing was somewhat ?' This lofty schoolmaster employed my name sarcastically, and stressed...
Merlin: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Merlin. You are about to embark on what is probably the most dangerous job interview in the world. One of you, and only one of you, will become the next Lancelot. [Grabs bag on bed] Merlin: Can anybody tell me...
Annie Wilkes: Anything else I can get for you while I am in town? How about a tiny tape recorder, or how about a handmade pair of writing slippers? Paul Sheldon: No, just the paper would be fine. Annie Wilkes: Are you sure? Because if you want I can ...
Raymond: Maple syrup is supposed to be on the table before the pancakes. Charlie: We haven't ordered yet, Ray. Raymond: Of course when they bring the maple syrup after the pancakes, it'll definitely be too late. Charlie: How is that gonna be too late...
The problem with me is that I cannot focus when she is on my mind. I can’t. I probably will make a mistake when writing that paper and will start writing everything I feel about her—the professor will be very happy with that, I am sure. Oh well, ...
Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a reg...
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction.
The master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts, and bind it upon your foreheads.
He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty pageants [...], which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much as the next person.
Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
The time of the autumn floods came and the hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. … Then the Lord of the River was beside himself with Joy, believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone.
. . . she tried to weave the strength of her father and the young beauty of her first love with David, the happy oblivion of her teens and her warm protected childhood into a magic cloak.
Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.
I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end.
