I like sitting and writing with my buddies.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

What can I say? I’m a talker.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

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

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

People want to go out and travel around and meet cool people. I could just go live in Vermont, but is that what I really want?

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.