A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

I think the perfect pen name is Quill McSeagull. Especially for writing flights of fancy—and nothing has more feathers than a love poem.

...it is precisely because the world appears to us to be multiple, ambiguous, and paradoxical, that we must strive to speak and write clearly.

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you're capable of.

It is the storyteller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.

Es kommt nicht darauf an, wie eine Geschichte anfängt. Auch nicht darauf, wie sie aufhört. Sondern auf das, was dazwischen passiert.

That's typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

What is the best way to write? Each of us has to discover her own way by writing. Writing teaches writing. No one can tell you your own secret.

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.