Quotes on Fiction Writers

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

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.