Writing

"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose."

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."

"Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read."

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol."

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding. We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding. If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

"The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience."

"I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.", 1657)"

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"It has often been saidthere’s so much to be read,you never can cramall those words in your head. So the writer who breedsmore words than he needsis making a chorefor the reader who reads. That's why my belief isthe briefer the brief is,the greater the sighof the reader's relief is. And that's why your bookshave such power and strength. You publish with shorth!(Shorth is better than length.)"

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

"Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time."

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

"Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it."

"If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning..."

"When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble."

"Maybe love was meant to save us from ourselves."

"You’re not a bad person, you’re just a little bit different and I’m a sucker for that."