I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.
Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.
When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

























