“What you write should entertain you and serve you first. Don’t worry about maintaining anything beyond your own attention. Focus on exorcising your demons in the work. If you can do that, then you’ll succeed in the world.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
“A story should entertain the writer, too.”
— Stephen King
“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”
— Susan Sontag
“Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.”
— Wally Lamb
“I think that in the world right now, we have a hunger for counter-narratives. We like to challenge the stories we’ve been told or given because we’re asking better questions and we’re caring a lot more about perspective.”
— Lauren JA Bear
“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”
— Octavia E. Butler
“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.”
— Maya Angelou
“I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.”
— David Sedaris
“The thing that appealed to me about writing a novel was the fact that no one could tell me not to do it. And actually, the only person that was going to stop me from doing it was me. ”
— Samuel Barr
“I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. ”
