Also available in the Words of Wisdom series:

The Architect Says

Laura S. Dushkes

The Designer Says

Sara Bader

The Filmmaker Says

Jamie Thompson Stern

The Chef Says

Nach Waxman and Matt Sartwell

The Musician Says

Benedetta LoBalbo

The Inventor Says

Kevin Lippert

Contents

PREFACE

THE WRITER SAYS

INDEX

PREFACE

This is the seventh volume in our informally named Words of Wisdom series, which includes collections of quotes and quips from architects, designers, musicians, filmmakers, chefs, and inventors. Typically, these are library research projects (the series was inspired by librarian Laura Dushke’s collection of quotes from architects, which became The Architect Says). The process involves finding, verifying, and organizing quotes, a sometimes painstaking effort. This book, however, was more akin to filling a Dixie cup from a fire hose, so large is the universe of advice to and from writers, in the form of books, articles, interviews, websites, and courses. Writers don’t agree about what to write about, or how, but do seem to agree there’s always room for one more book on the shelf of writing advice.

The quotes come from many different kinds of writers, including novelists, personal essayists, grammarians, academics, and journalists, but certain threads are common: the necessity of a good work space, a diligent work schedule, and perseverance (Annie Lamott’s oft-quoted dictum “Butt in chair,” from her wise and funny Bird by Bird, is repeated in many iterations), the need for a good editor (I’ve been extremely fortunate to have one of the best in the business, Sara Stemen, as mine), and the absolute necessity of reading in general—widely, often, and carefully. Whether or not you’re a writer and use this book for inspiration, fun, or not at all, this exhortation to read is music to a publisher’s ears, and I’m delighted you’ve made room in your reading and writing schedule for this slim volume. I hope you find some nuggets to invigorate and amuse, as I did.

While this is by no means a how-to book, it draws from much of the landscape of books about writing, from the ups and downs of the writing life (as in Dani Shapiro’s heartfelt and honest Still Writing) to discussions of what makes fiction effective (E. M. Forster’s witty Aspects of the Novel) to the mechanics and poetics of wordsmithing (Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences about Writing and Richard Goodman’s The Soul of Creative Writing). Indeed, anyone interested in writing and the power of language will be richer for diving into any of the sources here.

Kevin Lippert

Hudson, New York

November 2017

THE WRITER SAYS

WRITING IS AN

ACT OF COURAGE.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975–)

What writing is:

telepathy, of course.

Stephen King (1947–)

The great power of literature . . . is that if 1,000 people read the same book, the book reads each of them differently.

David Grossman (1954–)

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today—that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

Beware of a writer quoting too much; he may be quoting all he knows.

Alfred Kazin (1915–98)

YOU CAN ONLY BECOME A BETTER WRITER BY BECOMING A BETTER READER.

Verlyn Klinkenborg (1952–)

What I wrote when I was very young had some of the characteristic qualities of every writer I had any feeling for. It takes a while before that admiration sinks back and becomes unconscious. The writers stay with you for the rest of your life. But at least they don’t intrude and become visible to the reader.

William Maxwell (1908–2000)

My childhood was aberrant and peculiar and nomadic and absolutely unpredictable. . . . The mixture of solitude and uncertainty fertilized the situation enormously. . . . Inevitably I was making up stories to myself, retreating into myself.

John le Carré (1931–)

Writing for me is to a large extent self-entertainment, and the only child is driven to do that. For example, I’m an expert whistler . . . but that takes hours of practice, the sort of thing one hasn’t got time for if one’s part of a large family, I imagine.

Kingsley Amis (1922–95)

When I was between fourteen and eighteen I was a delinquent teenager, always in trouble, breaking the law, doing drugs. Then I became a successful writer, and it has sort of worked out.

Hanif Kureishi (1954–)

IF I HADN’T WRITTEN, I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING STUPID THAT WOULD HAVE LED TO MY DEATH.

Octavia Butler (1947–2006)

Some kids liked to play tennis, I liked to write. I wasn’t out hanging out or doing a lot of stuff teens were doing, because what I liked to do was be in my room and type.

S. E. Hinton (1948–)

I . . . looked back to myself as a sixteen-year-old and how much I loved reading and how a book could completely change my life . . . so I just like the idea of trying to write for all those versions of me out there, wherever they are.

Sherman Alexie (1966–)

I STARTED WRITING MY OWN THINGS WHEN I WAS TWELVE, THIRTEEN, AND I KNOW WHY I DID IT—MAINLY BECAUSE I HAD FINISHED ALL THE ADVENTURE NOVELS, MUSKETEER NOVELS, AND DUMAS THAT I WAS READING AT THE TIME. THEN I FOUND OUT I COULD WRITE THEM MYSELF.

Javier Marías (1951–)

Finally, after all these years of reading books, editing books, working in libraries, I thought, “Wait a minute, there’s no book in there about me!” So if I wanted to read it, I would probably have to write it.

Toni Morrison (1931–)

My family has been the biggest thing in my life. It is much more than just a resource for my writing. I have always felt like the son in some ways.

I think that’s true of all extended families, as true of Italian or Jewish families as Indian ones. You never gain independence. In your imagination, you are always someone’s child, long dead though they may be.

Vikram Seth (1952–)

Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

Paul Theroux (1941–)

I decided to become a writer. It was a good idea. Having had no experience whatever in writing, except writing letters and reports, I wasn’t handicapped by exaggerated notions of the difficulties ahead.

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961)

I JUST KNEW I WOULD BE A WRITER. IT JUST SEEMED THE ONLY SENSIBLE THING TO DO.

Jane Gardam (1928–)

If you get right out of college and expect (or want) to get a job as a writer, you might be making a mistake. You might be better off working on a merchant ship or a cannery or a hospital—something new, something where you might learn a thing or two.

Dave Eggers (1970–)

Do something else. Because what’s going to happen in the next five years if you stay within your niche is already so circumscribed and predictable. And what can happen if you leave it and do something else is unknown, and therefore bigger. Experiences like these, and the people you’ll meet, can inform your work in the future in so many ways.

Chris Kraus (1955–)

You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it’s not there.

Mary Gaitskill (1954–)

Understand that everyone has 1,000 pages of bad fiction in him or her, and before you can do anything, you probably have to just write your thousand pages of crap.

Jennifer Finney Boylan (1958–)

THE FIRST THING A WRITER HAS TO DO IS FIND ANOTHER SOURCE OF INCOME.

Ellen Gilchrist (1935–)

I FEEL THAT I HAVE NOT TALENTS WHATSOEVER IN MONEY AND BUSINESS MATTERS. SO MAYBE I OUGHT NOT TO DO WITH IT AT ALL. I GET TOO THOROUGHLY IMMERSED IN MY DREAMS. BUT SOMEHOW LIFE IS SO ORGANIZED THAT I FIND MYSELF TIED TO MONEY MATTERS LIKE A GRAZING HORSE TO A STAKE.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

I don’t think I’ve ever felt, before or since, anything like the elation of realizing I was going to be published.

J. K. Rowling (1965–)

I really felt I peaked when I saw my first novel in print.

Herman Koch (1953–)

I like Hollywood. . . . Honestly, if I were a generation younger, I probably would have started with TV instead of books.

Gary Shteyngart (1972–)

Let me not imply that there are no writers of authentic ability in Hollywood. There are not many, but there are not many anywhere.

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

I THINK OF MYSELF AS A NEW YORK WRITER EVEN WHEN I AM NOT IN NEW YORK, AND BY THAT I MEAN, I THINK THE VALUES AND THEMES OF NEW YORK—UNIQUENESS, AMBITION, OUTSIDERS/INSIDERS, FAILURE, GRANDIOSITY, AND HUMILIATION—ARE DEEPLY INGRAINED IN MY POINT OF VIEW.

Min Jin Lee (1968–)

AS A NATIVE NEW YORKER, REAL ESTATE IS ALWAYS, ALWAYS INTERESTING TO ME.

Emma Straub (1980–)

The longer I work at the craft of writing, the more I realize that there’s nothing more interesting than the truth. . . . Who could invent all the astonishing things that really happen? I increasingly find myself saying to writers and students, “Trust your material.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015)

I love the details of a novel. For research, I like to go to the location of the places in the novels. The first thing that I do is involve my senses: I notice the smells; I open the trash cans and look at what people have thrown away.

Natsuo Kirino (1951–)

I don’t think I’ve ever written about a part of the world which I myself haven’t visited. But you see, I was a reporter for a long time. I have a reporter’s eye and sense of locality, and I add to this by taking notes and buying road maps wherever I happen to be.

Ian Fleming (1908–64)

WE’VE ALL READ NOVELS WHERE YOU PLOW THROUGH THREE PAGES ON THE MANUFACTURE OF RUBBER AND YOU REALIZE THAT THE WRITER HAS BEEN TO SINGAPORE TO SEE A RUBBER PLANTATION AND BY GOD ARE WE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT IT.

William Boyd (1952–)

If you want to find a magical situation, magical things, you have to go deep inside yourself. So that is what I do. People say it’s magic realism—but in the depths of my soul, it’s just realism. Not magical. While I’m writing, it’s very natural, very logical, very realistic and reasonable.

Haruki Murakami (1949–)

There’s not a line in any of my books which I can’t connect to a real experience. There is always a reference to a concrete reality.

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014)

ONE WRITES OUT OF ONE THING ONLY—ONE’S OWN EXPERIENCE. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON HOW RELENTLESSLY ONE FORCES FROM THIS EXPERIENCE THE LAST DROP, SWEET OR BITTER, IT CAN POSSIBLY GIVE.

James Baldwin (1924–87)

CROSSING BORDERS MEANS THAT AT TIMES I SHARE THINGS THAT I DON’T WANT TO SHARE. BUT IF YOU REALLY SEE YOURSELF AS A WORKER FOR FREEDOM, THEN THE CHALLENGE IS ALSO ON YOU TO SACRIFICE WHATEVER NOTIONS OF PRIVACY THAT MANY OF US WOULD WANT TO HOLD ON TO.

bell hooks (1952–)

I really want to escape myself as much as I can—myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker.

Chang-Rae Lee (1965–)

The best way for me to solve problems in my own life is to write about them.

Peter Straub (1943–)

I don’t write for my friends or myself, either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it. I believe if I stopped to wonder what so-and-so would think, or what I’d feel like if this were read by a stranger, I would be paralyzed.

Eudora Welty (1909–2001)

DON’T WRITE TO TRENDS, AND LET THE MARKETPLACE COME TO YOU.

Jeff VanderMeer (1968–)

Historically, the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day but the popular fiction of the day.

Jodi Picoult (1966–)

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

There are few things that depress me more than hearing the word “great” followed by a nationality and then the word “novel.” There is no such thing as the great anything novel.

Marlon James (1970–)

THERE’S NO GREAT LITERARY TRADITION. THERE’S ONLY THE TRADITION OF THE EVENTUAL DEATH OF EVERY LITERARY TRADITION.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

The good writer seems to be writing about himself (but never is) but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself, and all things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82)

I’ve never felt narcissism to be a sin. . . . I think it’s necessary to be absolutely in love with ourselves. It’s only by reflecting on myself with attention and care that I can reflect on the world. It’s only by turning my gaze on myself that I can understand others, feel them as my kin.

Elena Ferrante (unknown)

I approach [writing] as if I’m a priestess. I understand that all the forces are being called upon to help me deliver what is most useful and most nourishing for whoever is reading.

Alice Walker (1944–)

I am fortunate and blessed to be the flute, but I recognize and acknowledge I am not the music.

Sandra Cisneros (1954–)

Why is one compelled to write? To set oneself apart, cocooned, rapt in solitude, despite the wants of others.

Patti Smith (1946–)

I DIDN’T APPLY FOR GRANTS OR WRITERS’ CENTERS. I DIDN’T JOIN WRITERS’ GROUPS. I JUST COULDN’T DO IT. IT DIDN’T SEEM AN HONEST WAY TO WRITE TO ME. WHEN YOU WRITE ON YOUR OWN, YOU CAN WRITE THE EXTREMES. NO ONE ELSE IS WATCHING AND YOU CAN REALLY GO AS FAR AS YOU NEED TO.

Kiran Desai (1971–)

I’ve referred to a novel as a job. But it can also be much more fantastic than that: an alternative universe you enter through concentration and writing. But of course it’s difficult to set your life up to accommodate an alternative universe, which is why writing one can take a long time.

Lorrie Moore (1957–)

Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.

Jhumpa Lahiri (1967–)

I HAVE A LOT OF FAITH IN WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH A WELL-POLISHED ENGLISH SENTENCE. NOT THAT I TRY TO MAKE THE LANGUAGE OLD-FASHIONED, BUT I LIKE A CLEAN SENTENCE.

Teju Cole (1975–)

I am not particularly interested in language. Or rather, I am interested in what language can do for me, and I spend many hours each day trying to ensure my prose is as simple as it can possibly be.

Nick Hornby (1957–)

I’M GLAD YOU LIKE ADVERBS—I ADORE THEM.

Henry James (1843–1916)

WHEN YOU CATCH AN ADJECTIVE, KILL IT.

Mark Twain (1835–1910)

If any ideas are to be found in what I write, those ideas came after the writing. I mean, I began by the writing, I began by the story, I began with the dream, if you want to call it that. And then afterwards, perhaps, some idea came of it. But I didn’t begin, as I say, by the moral and then writing a fable to prove it.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. . . . What is going on in these pictures in my mind?

Joan Didion (1934–)

IT’S AMAZING WHAT HAVING AN IDEA FOR A NOVEL WILL FORCE YOU TO DO, AND THE WORLDS THAT YOU WILL ENTER. YOU’LL HAVE TO LEARN TO BE CONVINCING TO PEOPLE WHO KNOW THOSE WORLDS REALLY, REALLY WELL.

Peter Carey (1943–)

I always have these ideas, and I think, “That would be really good; if I was a better writer, I could pull it off.” And then I try to become a better writer to do it justice.

Colson Whitehead (1969–)

IF YOU HAVE A THOUGHT, AN IDEA, A CHANGE, DON’T EVER DELAY PUTTING IT DOWN—NOT EVEN FOR THREE SECONDS.

IT WILL ESCAPE FOREVER. NO AMOUNT OF PLEADING, PRAYER, OR CURSING WILL BRING IT BACK.

Richard Goodman (1945–)

I tried to keep [a notebook], but I never could remember where I put the damn thing. I always say I’m going to keep one tomorrow.

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)

To me, writing is entirely mysterious. If I didn’t believe it was a mystery, the whole thing wouldn’t be worthwhile. I don’t know not just how something is going to end but what the next couple of lines are going to be.

William Trevor (1928–2016)

Confusion is the best place to start a story.

Amy Tan (1952–)

The first draft is torture! It’s so hard for me. Once I’ve written the first draft, I have the pieces to the puzzle, and I love to put it together and make it into a whole.

Judy Blume (1938–)

The restless condition in which I wander up and down my room with the first page of my new book before me defies all description. I feel as if nothing would do me the least good but setting up a Balloon. It might be inflated in the garden in front—but I am afraid of its scarcely clearing those little houses.

Charles Dickens (1812–70)

BEFORE I START A BOOK I’VE USUALLY GOT FOUR HUNDRED PAGES OF NOTES. MOST OF THEM ARE ALMOST INCOHERENT. BUT THERE’S ALWAYS A MOMENT WHEN YOU FEEL YOU’VE GOT A NOVEL STARTED. YOU CAN MORE OR LESS SEE HOW IT’S GOING TO WORK OUT. AFTER THAT IT’S JUST A QUESTION OF DETAIL.

P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975)

WRITING A NOVEL IS AS IF YOU ARE GOING OFF ON A JOURNEY ACROSS A VALLEY. THE VALLEY IS FULL OF MIST, BUT YOU CAN SEE THE TOP OF A TREE HERE AND THE TOP OF ANOTHER TREE OVER THERE. AND WITH ANY LUCK YOU CAN SEE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VALLEY. BUT YOU CANNOT SEE DOWN INTO THE MIST. NEVERTHELESS, YOU HEAD FOR THE FIRST TREE.

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015)

A piece of writing has to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there. You do that by building what you hope is an unarguable structure. Beginning, middle, end.

John McPhee (1931–)

When structure is done well, it should be like architecture: you sense the overall feel of the building—tall, or airy, or strong—but you’re not looking at the buttresses that hold it up or the seams where parts are fastened together.

Celeste Ng (1980–)

I conceive my subjects like a man—that is, rather more architectonically and dramatically than most women—and then execute them like a woman; or rather, I sacrifice, to my desire for construction and breadth, the small incidental effects that women have always excelled in, the episodical characterization, I mean.

Edith Wharton (1862–1937)

It’s the small, unlovely places of life that have always called most eloquently to me: they’re the ones that traditional histories tend to overlook, but they often provide the settings for some of our most intense personal dramas—especially, perhaps, if we are women.

Sarah Waters (1966–)

Men write dark stories all the time, and rarely is that darkness obsessed over. But when women write dark, all of a sudden it’s a thing. It’s like: Why so dark?

Roxane Gay (1974–)

IF YOU CAN MAKE A PIECE OF WRITING FUNNY, YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH ALMOST ANYTHING—YOU CAN GET VERY DARK, YOU CAN MOCK THE VERY POWERFUL, AND YOU CAN TRICK PEOPLE INTO EAGERLY CONSUMING IDEAS THAT ARE NORMALLY VERY THREATENING.

Lindy West (1982–)

I HAVE NEVER FULLY EXORCISED SHAMES THAT STRUCK ME TO THE HEART AS A CHILD EXCEPT THROUGH WRITTEN VIOLENCE, SHADOWY CARICATURE, AND DARK JOKES.

Louise Erdrich (1954–)

Perhaps writing in general is shame management. Certainly female writing has to radically address this problem.

Anne Enright (1962–)

The thought of a married woman writing a story about a marriage gives me a kind of queasy, embarrassed feeling. What a clichéd waste of time! And therein lies the challenge: this shame.

Miranda July (1974–)

ALL LITERATURE IS ABOUT LOVE. WHEN MEN DO IT, IT’S A POLITICAL COMMENT ON HUMAN RELATIONS. WHEN WOMEN DO IT, IT’S JUST A LOVE STORY.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977–)

I write about love because it’s the most important thing in the world. I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world. But I set these personal private passions against an outside world—sometimes hostile, usually strange—so that we can see what happens when inner and outer realities collide.

Jeanette Winterson (1959–)

My heroines are always virgins. They never go to bed without a ring on their fingers—not until page 118 at least.

Barbara Cartland (1901–2000)

I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don’t want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that’s the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007)

Love, like death, is congenial to a novelist because it ends a book conveniently.

E. M. Forster (1879–1970)

I HAVE A COLD ATTITUDE TO MY CHARACTERS. AND I DON’T PREPARE READERS FOR SOMETHING TERRIBLE. I JUST BRING IT OUT. I PREFER SHOCK TREATMENT.

Muriel Spark (1918–2006)

I have this tremendous urge to push the characters off a cliff, which I have to hold back from.

Alan Hollinghurst (1954–)

I suppose you could say there is an element of the laboratory about all fiction writing. To some extent they’re thought experiments. . . . There is that slightly chilly aspect to writing fiction—you do have to be slightly detached to say: How would human beings respond in this situation?

Kazuo Ishiguro (1954–)

There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.

Graham Greene (1904–1991)

YOU MUST BE ABLE TO SUMMON EMPATHY FOR ALL YOUR CHARACTERS, EVEN AND ESPECIALLY THE DESPICABLE ONES.

Hanya Yanagihara (1974–)

I have a fondness for all of my characters, even the bad guys who are bad because they are selfish or dumb or lazy. I only had one really evil guy, I thought, and I didn’t care much for him . . . his mother was nice to him, you know, but he wasn’t nice to his mother.

Elmore Leonard (1925–2013)

People act out of selfishness and a desire to avoid pain, but sometimes they act in ways that are mysterious to themselves. . . . Terrible things happen and nobody learns anything. I wanted to move away from notions of what a character has to earn or realize, and aim for some kind of truth that has more to do with life as I know it.

Emma Cline (1989–)

THERE’S SOMETHING DISHONEST ABOUT BEING KIND TO MY CHARACTERS, BECAUSE THE WORLD, SO OFTEN, ISN’T KIND TO THEM. I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT WITH ALL MY CHARACTERS. IT WAS CONSTANTLY ON MY MIND. I HAD TO BE HONEST. I HAD TO BE RUTHLESS.

Jesmyn Ward (1977–)

The story doesn’t want to be told what to do. You have to enter into this process with a high level of trust that the many hours of choosing that you’re doing every day will gradually clarify the narrative for you.

George Saunders (1958–)

MY CHARACTERS ARE GALLEY SLAVES.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

The legacy of the fairy story in my brain is that everything will work out. In fiction it would be very hard for me, as a writer, to give a bad ending to a good character, or give a good ending to a bad character.

Kate Atkinson (1951–)

THE STORY OR THE CHARACTERS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN. I CAN’T CONTROL THEM. I WANT THE CHARACTERS TO BE HAPPY, TO GET MARRIED, AND TO HAVE A LOT OF CHILDREN AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER, BUT IT NEVER HAPPENS THAT WAY.

Isabel Allende (1942–)

To write, I like a room with a view, preferably a long view. I dislike looking out on gardens. I prefer looking at the sea, or ships, or anything that has a vista to it. Oddly enough, I’ve never worked in the mountains.

Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

Annie Dillard (1945–)

Don’t write in public places. . . . It should be done only in private, like any other lavatorial activity.

Geoff Dyer (1958–)

In a newspaper office, you realize you don’t need to be in a quiet room to write. You have to write in a park or a pub or in a telephone box to get out of the rain. You short-circuit those sensitivities that writers develop. Proust would have saved money on his cork-lined bedroom had he worked for a while at Le Figaro.

Michael Frayn (1933–)

I STARTED DRINKING SHORTLY AFTER I STARTED WRITING. AND THEN I KIND OF GOT IT IN MY HEAD THAT I NEEDED TO BE DRINKING WHILE I WROTE. . . . I DON’T KNOW WHY I WAS SO CONVINCED OF IT—IT’S LIKE SAYING “I CAN’T SING UNLESS I HAVE A BLUE SHIRT ON.”

David Sedaris (1956–)

I work from 10:30am to mid-afternoon, not stopping for lunch. I drink lots of coffee and smoke cigarettes. Smoking is so tied to writing I could not give it up.

Martin Amis (1949–)

I FOUND THAT THREE HOURS A DAY IS ABOUT ALL I CAN DO OF ACTUAL COMPOSING. I COULD DO POLISHING PERHAPS LATER. I SOMETIMES FOUND AT FIRST THAT I WANTED TO GO ON LONGER, BUT WHEN I LOOKED AT THE STUFF THE NEXT DAY, WHAT I’D DONE AFTER THE THREE HOURS WERE UP WAS NEVER SATISFACTORY. IT’S MUCH BETTER TO STOP AND THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE QUITE DIFFERENT.

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)

Two thousand words is a good day’s work.

Evelyn Waugh (1903–66)

How to write: butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt back in chair.

Anne Lamott (1954–)

I . . . venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship as the business of their lives . . . to avoid enthusiastic rushes with their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day by day as though they were lawyers’ clerks—and so let them sit until the allotted task shall be accomplished.

Anthony Trollope (1815–82)

BE A GOOD STEWARD OF YOUR GIFTS. PROTECT YOUR TIME. FEED YOUR INNER LIFE. AVOID TOO MUCH NOISE. READ GOOD BOOKS, HAVE GOOD SENTENCES IN YOUR EARS. BE BY YOURSELF AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN. WALK. TAKE THE PHONE OFF THE HOOK. WORK REGULAR HOURS.

Jane Kenyon (1947–95)

Get a dog. . . .

Being a dog owner requires a similar form of discipline [to writing]. You wake up every morning. You walk the dog. You do this whether you’re tired, depressed, broke, hung over, or have been recently dumped. You do it.

Jennifer Weiner (1970–)

Here’s a short list of what not to do when you sit down to write. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t look at e-mail. Don’t go on the Internet for any reason.

Dani Shapiro (1962–)

DON’T HAVE CHILDREN.

Richard Ford (1944–)

It wasn’t the housework or the children that dragged me down. I’d done housework all my life. It was the sort of open rule that women who tried to do anything so weird as writing were unseemly and possibly neglectful.

Alice Munro (1931–)

Composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Joints of Mutton and doses of rhubarb.

Jane Austen (1775–1817)

YOU CAN ONLY WRITE REGULARLY IF YOU’RE WILLING TO WRITE BADLY. YOU CAN’T WRITE REGULARLY AND WELL. ONE SHOULD ACCEPT BAD WRITING AS A WAY OF PRIMING THE PUMP, A WARM-UP EXERCISE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO WRITE WELL.

Jennifer Egan (1962–)

You can always fix bad pages. You can’t fix no pages.

Harlan Coben (1962–)

I do not rework poems, but let them go at first sitting, because if I have lied originally, there’s no use driving the spikes home, and if I haven’t lied, well hell, there’s nothing to worry about.

Charles Bukowski (1920–94)

I REALLY ENJOY REVISING MORE THAN WRITING. I LOVE TO CROSS THINGS OUT AND CUT A PAGE DOWN TO ONE PARAGRAPH.

Beverly Cleary (1916–)

For me [writing is] mostly a question of rewriting.

James Thurber (1894–1961)

THERE’S A POINT AT WHICH YOU’RE NOT MAKING IT BETTER; YOU’RE JUST MAKING IT DIFFERENT. YOU HAVE TO BE GOOD AT RECOGNIZING THAT POINT.

Salman Rushdie (1947–)

You know when a piece is finished, because you can’t pull out a single sentence or change a word or syllable.

Charles Johnson (1948–)

Any piece of writing is just the last proof; it’s the one we had to let go of because the deadline is here.

Roger Angell (1920–)

It’s never a day job; it’s always a tremendous challenge. People always ask me, “Do you ever start a book and then put it aside and do something different?” And, unfortunately, no, I always write everything right to the bitter end.

Edmund White (1940–)

THEY CAN’T YANK [A] NOVELIST LIKE THEY CAN [A] PITCHER. [A] NOVELIST HAS TO GO THE FULL NINE, EVEN IF IT KILLS HIM.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY A BEGINNER—EVERY DAY.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ASSUME THAT YOU’LL BE ABLE TO WRITE BECAUSE YOU COULD WRITE YESTERDAY.

Hilary Mantel (1952–)

The scary thing about writing novels is that they’re all different. What worked last time, won’t this time, and there’s always that little voice that whispers to you that this time you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, located the very story that will show you who’s boss (not you).

Richard Russo (1949–)

I DON’T HAVE ANY ANXIETY ABOUT WRITING. NOT REALLY. IT’S SUCH A PLEASURE, AND OUR LIVES ARE SO RELATIVELY EASY COMPARED TO PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY OUT THERE IN THE WORLD WORKING HARD AND SUFFERING.

Joyce Carol Oates (1938–)

Anyone who writes or chooses a writing life is walking off the edge of the universe into the big dark naked and crying.

Lidia Yuknavitch (1963–)

Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage in sport, I go for walks on the edge of the sea, which by the way is less than thirty meters from my house, and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish who ate Ulysses: Why me? Why? I’ve done you no harm.

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003)

WHEN GOD HANDS YOU A GIFT, HE ALSO HANDS YOU A WHIP; AND THE WHIP IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR SELF-FLAGELLATION.

Truman Capote (1924–84)

The effort of writing seems more arduous all the time. Unlike technicians who are supposed to become more proficient with practice, I find I’ve grown considerably less articulate.

S. J. Perelman (1904–79)

ALL WRITERS FEEL STRUCK BY THE LIMITATIONS OF LANGUAGE.

Margaret Atwood (1939–)

In the end a man must sit down and get the words on paper, and against great odds. This takes stamina and resolution.

E. B. White (1899–1985)

No writer who achieves spectacular success does so without a modicum of good luck.

P. D. James (1920–2014)

[The] impulse—to tell a tale rich in context, alive to situation, shot through with event and perspective—is as strong in human beings as the need to eat food and breathe air: it may be suppressed but it can never be destroyed.

Vivian Gornick (1935–)

A WRITER IS A WRITER BECAUSE EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO HOPE, EVEN WHEN NOTHING YOU DO SHOWS ANY SIGN OF PROMISE, YOU KEEP WRITING ANYWAY.

Junot Díaz (1968–)

I’m always thinking about duties, rights, and gifts. . . . That’s how social worlds and our intimate lives are structured, right? What is your duty? What accrues to you? What is your right? And what are your gifts? The wildcard is gifts because what rights accrue to you because of certain gifts?

Zadie Smith (1975–)

There’s no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally yourself with power against the powerless.

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013)

I’m not a big believer in the novelist’s obligation to reflect or catalyze society in some ways. . . . I don’t write books that have messages. None of them have a moral to them. I’m more interested in exploring things that are hard to understand and maybe bringing the readers with me.

Tana French (1973–)

What a novel can do is show the distance between what’s being said and what’s being felt. . . .The drama is the distance between what’s to be spoken of and what’s not to be mentioned again.

Colm Tóibín (1955–)

If being a novelist has any moral, political side, it is identifying with people who are not like you. It’s not that we make political statements or show our party cards; it’s seeing the world through the eyes of someone who is different.

Orhan Pamuk (1952–)

LITERATURE IS POWERLESS IN DIRECTLY CONFRONTING THE EVIL, BUT IT CAN BE SUBVERSIVE AND EFFECTIVE IN SHAPING READERS’ SENSIBILITIES AND CHANGING THEIR WAY OF SEEING THINGS. IT IS A SLOW PROCESS.

Ha Jin (1956–)

CREATE DANGEROUSLY, FOR PEOPLE WHO READ DANGEROUSLY. THIS IS WHAT I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT IT MEANT TO BE A WRITER. WRITING, KNOWING IN PART THAT NO MATTER HOW TRIVIAL YOUR WORDS MAY SEEM, SOMEDAY, SOMEWHERE, SOMEONE MAY RISK HIS OR HER LIFE TO READ THEM.

Edwidge Danticat (1969–)

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. . . . They are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway, but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it’s hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper.

Wole Soyinka (1934–)

READING IS AN ACTIVE, IMAGINATIVE ACT; IT TAKES WORK.

Khaled Hosseini (1965–)

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

James Joyce (1882–1941)

Whether I’m writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It’s a way to stay busy during one’s ephemeral and confusing life.

Jonathan Ames (1964–)

On my tombstone, I want to have the words “She gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure.”

Jackie Collins (1937–2015)

THE REAL TROUBLE WITH THE WRITING GAME IS THAT NO GENERAL RULE CAN BE WORKED OUT FOR UNIFORM GUIDANCE.

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970)

You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules.

Jamaica Kincaid (1949–)

INDEX

Achebe, Chinua 143

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 87

Alexie, Sherman 19

Allende, Isabel 103

Ames, Jonathan 152

Amis, Kingsley 15

Amis, Martin 109

Angell, Roger 127

Atkinson, Kate 102

Atwood, Margaret 137

Austen, Jane 119

Baldwin, James 44

Bass, Rick 160

Blume, Judy 74

Bolaño, Roberto 134

Borges, Jorge Luis 66

Boyd, William 41

Boylan, Jennifer Finney 29

Bradbury, Ray 51

Bukowski, Charles 122

Butler, Octavia 17

Capote, Truman 135

Carey, Peter 68

Cartland, Barbara 89

Chandler, Raymond 35

Cisneros, Sandra 57

Cleary, Beverly 123

Cline, Emma 98

Coates, Ta-Nehisi 7

Coben, Harlan 121

Cole, Teju 62

Collins, Jackie 153

Danticat, Edwidge 148

Desai, Kiran 59

Díaz, Junot 141

Dickens, Charles 75

Didion, Joan 67

Dillard, Annie 105

Dyer, Geoff 106

Egan, Jennifer 120

Eggers, Dave 26

Eliot, T. S. 110

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 54

Enright, Anne 85

Erdrich, Louise 84

Ferrante, Elena 55

Fitzgerald, F. Scott 53

Fleming, Ian 40

Ford, Richard 117

Forster, E. M. 91

Frayn, Michael 107

French, Tana 144

Gaitskill, Mary 28

García Márquez, Gabriel 43

Gardam, Jane 25

Gardner, Erle Stanley 154

Gay, Roxane 82

Gilchrist, Ellen 30

Goodman, Richard 70

Gornick, Vivian 140

Greene, Graham 95

Grossman, David 9

Hammett, Dashiell 24

Hemingway, Ernest 129

Hinton, S. E. 18

Hollinghurst, Alan 93

hooks, bell 45

Hornby, Nick 63

Hosseini, Khaled 150

Hurston, Zora Neale 31

Ishiguro, Kazuo 94

James, Henry 64

James, Marlon 52

James, P. D. 139

Jin, Ha 147

Johnson, Charles 126

Joyce, James 151

July, Miranda 86

Kazin, Alfred 11

Kenyon, Jane 114

Kincaid, Jamaica 155

King, Stephen 8

Kirino, Natsuo 39

Klinkenborg, Verlyn 12

Koch, Herman 33

Kraus, Chris 27

Kureishi, Hanif 16

Lahiri, Jhumpa 61

Lamott, Anne 112

le Carré, John 14

Lee, Chang-Rae 46

Lee, Min Jin 36

Leonard, Elmore 97

Mailer, Norman 104

Mantel, Hilary 130

Marías, Javier 20

Maxwell, William 13

McPhee, John 78

Moore, Lorrie 60

Morrison, Toni 21

Munro, Alice 118

Murakami, Haruki 42

Nabokov, Vladimir 101

Ng, Celeste 79

Oates, Joyce Carol 132

Pamuk, Orhan 146

Parker, Dorothy 71

Perelman, S. J. 136

Picoult, Jodi 50

Pratchett, Terry 77

Rowling, J. K. 32

Rushdie, Salman 125

Russo, Richard 131

Saunders, George 100

Sedaris, David 108

Seth, Vikram 22

Shapiro, Dani 116

Shteyngart, Gary 34

Smith, Patti 58

Smith, Zadie 142

Soyinka, Wole 149

Spark, Muriel 92

Straub, Emma 37

Straub, Peter 47

Tan, Amy 73

Theroux, Paul 23

Thurber, James 124

Tóibín, Colm 145

Trevor, William 72

Trollope, Anthony 113

Twain, Mark 65

VanderMeer, Jeff 49

Vonnegut, Kurt 90

Walker, Alice 56

Ward, Jesmyn 99

Waters, Sarah 81

Waugh, Evelyn 111

Weiner, Jennifer 115

Welty, Eudora 48

West, Lindy 83

Wharton, Edith 80

White, E. B. 138

White, Edmund 128

Whitehead, Colson 69

Winterson, Jeanette 88

Wodehouse, P. G. 76

Woolf, Virginia 10

Yanagihara, Hanya 96

Yuknavitch, Lidia 133

Zinsser, William 38

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Write every day. Don’t ever stop.

Rick Bass (1958–)