The Craft Quotes

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.

The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

Any thing is interesting if you can communicate it. There are no unimportant subjects for the enlivened mind.

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.

When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.

There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.

[I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies...

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds.

Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.

He who works with his hands is a laborer.He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

I like to think I’ve written something worth reading when I cry the tears of the characters.

As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.

Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.

I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM.

Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.

If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention.

I believe that fiction with its untrammelled nature, speaks to no one, and by so doing, speaks to all.

Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick—then it’s personal. The bad guy isn’t just the “bad guy” anymore, he’s the BAD GUY!

Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it.

Don’t write what you know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words.

Writing's in the nouns.

Developing your voice takes... time and practice.

If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either

Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abru

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.

You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties.

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said "It is the trade entering his body.

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.

This is the secret to mastering any discipline: as you conquer one, you'll find it easier to tackle another.

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.

Marketing is the perfect blend or art and science. But more than that, marketing is a craft.

A really well-done first draft of a book bares your soul. The purpose of revision is so that everyone who reads the published version believes you were writing about theirs.

You don’t create a diamond by rubbing it with fluffy bunny slippers. You need to apply pressure and heat. There are enough air-headed cheerleaders out there. We need more drill sergeants.

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

You write what you know, and I know rock and roll.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.", Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

I craft most of my own tragedies without ever having even the remotest understanding that it is I myself who have done the crafting.

Always remember that writing is an alliance between author and reader. With every line we put down on the page, we need to leave room for the reader's imagination and intellect.

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!