All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.
Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.
Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.
Despite all of our technological advances, content creation still requires time, inspiration, and a certain amount of sweat. There aren't any shortcuts. You can't write an algorithm for it. You can't predict it. You can't code it.
As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.
Writing was, is, and will always be my favorite job.
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Minor writers think style is all.
I write because I like to make things and the only things I am good at making things with are words.
I won't be attempting to write Jane Austen-style prose - that would be suicidal. But I will attempt to bring the highest level of my own prose, and to make it sparkle.
Once something is well-written, then everything else is gravy.
I think all writers have a style, a particular voice and rhythm that you have to find.
To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.
I'm personally attracted to great writing - that's what turns me on the most.
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.
Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.
