Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.