I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound, too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing...
A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like it's a great secret.
There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.
I learn from everything I do, right and wrong. I think it helps me grow as a writer and a person.
You take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly...
The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you'll catch. Let a chapter rest for a day, you'll see ways to improve it. Let your...
One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the...
Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
