for me writing has always been best when it's intimate, as sexy as skin on skin

I remember an immense feeling of possibility at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given leave to open any I liked. There were more doors than one person could ever open in a lifetime, I thought (and still think).

The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story...when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds.

Chiariamo subito un punto, d’accordo? Non esistono un Magazzino delle Idee, un Supermercato delle Storie o un’Isola dei Bestseller Sepolti. Le buone trovate nascono quasi letteralmente dal nulla, piovendovi in testa da un cielo all’apparenza limpido: due pensieri in precedenza disgiunti si uniscono, creando qualcosa di nuovo sotto il sole. Il vostro compito non è mettervi a caccia di certe illuminazioni, ma saperle riconoscere quando si presentano.

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

My own schedule is pretty clear-cut. Mornings belong to whatever is new – the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, an any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically mornings are my prime writing time.

What I didn't realize was how many doors the act of writing unlocks, as if my Dad's old fountain pen wasn't really a pen at all, but some strange variety of skeleton key.