Writing

"Here is the stuff of originality. For it is in the totality of experience reckoned with, filed, and forgotten, that each man is truly different from all others in the world." - Ray Bradbury

"writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see… or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different." - Stephen King

"When did you last read a book of poetry or take time, of an afternoon, for an essay or two?" - Ray Bradbury

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." - Stephen King

"‘Rather, you are continuously summoned to solidarity,’ summoned not by any ‘external compulsion’ but ‘from within yourself’. You cannot do otherwise. And the same went for Saul: if it comes from within yourself, then you cannot do otherwise. No novelist can." - Martin Amis

"Oh, and when I asked my listeners how many of them had ever thought about being a writer? What proportion raised their hands? At least two-thirds. Making me suspect, for the first time ever, that the urge to write is almost universal. As it would be, wouldn’t it, don’t you think? How else can you begin to come to terms with the fact of your existe... See more

"The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you... See more

"A well-fed man keeps and calmly gives forth his infinitesimal portion of eternity. It sounds big in the summer night. And it is, as it always was down the ages, when there was a man with something to tell, and ones, quiet and wise, to listen." - Ray Bradbury