There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing..

We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way..

I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers..

You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything..

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one impo….

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easil….

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D. program was trying ….

People see everything through the lens of their obsessions..

To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a diff….

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books..

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another..

With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and ….

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his ….

Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing..

A lot of girls who turn into something remarkable start off as irrepressible, confident and a handful..

If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see….

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. ….

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become….

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off,….

If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out an….

I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to b….