“You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.”
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.
Every writer can tell you that a book is only truly alive when it finds passionate readers who bring it alive in their imaginations.
“There is no way of being a creative writer in America without being a loser.”
Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
If you appear in the 'atlantic' or 'harper's' or the 'new yorker,' by god, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.
That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.
I think that the direction in which a writer should look is around.
I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, i'm a drinker with a writing problem.
A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.