Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.

Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.

He felt as he always did when he finished a book — queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.