Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.

And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.

In the name of being social, we learn to ignore our natural instinct.Society keeps dictating do's and don'ts which we keep obeying day in and day out.

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]

If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!

I write to be a part of something - a world made up of words and ideas, which are sometimes painfully criticized, gratefully loved and can never be destroyed.

Membacalah empat jam sehari dan menulislah empat jam sehari. Kalau kau tidak bisa meluangkan waktu untuk itu, jangan harap kau bisa menjadi penulis yang baik.

Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction.

No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

...passive voice is better than writing out a humongous number and taking the risk that your readers' brains will be numb by the time they get to the verb.

Now may this little Book a blessing beTo those that love this little Book, and me:And may its Buyer have no cause to say,His money is but lost, or thrown away.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it

Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.

A writer should be a recluse. Why share words with a few friends in the moment when they can be written down in solitude and shared with everybody at any time?