I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --The other kind don't matter.

You can’t just write and write and put things in a drawer. They wither without the warm sun of someone else’s appreciation.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.

A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.

If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

It's the witching hour once more-When the Muse comes out to play.He calls me through that magic door-Where galaxies of worlds await!

When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.

It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public.