Nothing is sillier than the creative writing teacher's dictum"Write about what you know." But whether you're writingabout people or dragons, your personal observation of howthings happen in the world—how character reveals itself—canturn a dead scene into a vital one. Preliminary good advicemight be: Write as if you were a movie camera. Get exactlywhat is there. All human beings see with astonishing accuracy,not that they can necessarily write it down.

The question one asks of the young writer who wants toknow if he's got what it takes is this: "Is writing novels whatyou want to do? Really want to do?"If the young writer answers, "Yes," then all one can say is:Do it. In fact, he will anyway.

To be psychologically suited for membership in what I have called the highest class of novelists, the writer must be not only capable of understanding people different from himself but fascinated by such people . . . and have sufficient self-esteem that he is not threatened by difference.

One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.