Writing

"Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about."

"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story."

"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out."

"The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it."

"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it."

"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it."

"I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words."

"You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism."

"Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing."

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version."

"Good fiction creates its own reality."

"You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way."

"Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust."

"Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre."

"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist."

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

"It is the tale, not he who tells it."

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."

"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose."