Writing

"So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want."

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."

"If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist."

"You are what you write."

"This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."

"Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~"

"If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’."

"The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying awayto where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.”The first psycho therapist told me to spendthree hours each day sitting in a dark closetwith my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinkingabout how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happinesswhen they care more about what they givethan what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help meforget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cryabout the grief inside your bones.”But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumpedfrom the George Washington Bridgeinto the Hudson River convincedhe was entirely alone.”My bones said, “Write the poems."

"I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head."

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."

"You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you."

"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.", 1964)"

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."

"If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad."

"Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river."

"What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life."

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."

"One should use common words to say uncommon things"