On Writing

Joyce was in the habit of reading some of his own fiction to his pupils. After one of their lessons, Schmitz admitted that he, too, had been a writer once. Curious, Joyce asked to read his work, and Schmitz lent him his two novels. At their next lesson, Joyce arrived with an urgent question: “Do you know that you are a neglected writer?”

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

If a writer ever achieved that perfect book, Faulkner said, there would be nothing left for him but suicide.

something I never think about when I write a novel or a story, which is mainly designed to interact with another person on an intimate scale, in the silence of their reading experience.

every single distraction you may point to as the reason you have not or cannot make your work is all the same thing—it’s always just your fear of what may or may not happen if you make your work.

There may be many instructions out there for how or why to keep a diary or waste book or whatever, but my sense is that when a writer keeps a journal, its main benefit is not increased productivity or emotional balance or even practice for our rapidly degrading handwriting—for a writer, keeping a journal or otherwise writing sentences and paragraph... See more

One thing I’ve sometimes known and sometimes forgotten is that writing is a side effect of living, not the other way around. There are years that are for listening and reading and not producing that much. Sometimes doing your work is a critical and life-sustaining act, and other times writing is just something you’re hiding in; our creative lives c... See more