Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren’t very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor… And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.
As a rule, with me an unfinished thing is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It’s better, if there’s something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it’s in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness that serves as an incubator for the wonders being born.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.
All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
A non-writing writer is a monster inviting madness.
A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.