We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

Find a subject you care about and which you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed

Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers