“People who say you can't do something should be ignored. They're probably talking to themselves.”

“I'd be lying if I said killing off characters wasn't therapeutic in some way.”

“Park your ego and listen to your readers. They can be your best friend or your worst enemy. But chances are you'll learn something from them.”

“If you aren't willing to put your best work out there, write for yourself. Don't ever publish.”

“Writing is lonely. Until that moment you write your first character and suddenly you have company.”

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you cant, youre dead”

“When I am grown up I shall carry a notebooka fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.”

“Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. Its the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is luck.”

“Writing is a struggle against silence.”

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

“People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links t...”