“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” ~ Neil Gaiman
“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.” ~ Neil Gaiman
“You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody’s an expert on that one.” ~ Theodore Sturgeon
“We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.”
“I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. … I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories – science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
~ Ray Bradbury
“Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective’s struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective – but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.” ~ Raymond Chandler
“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.” ~ Dashiell Hammett
“There is only one plot-things are not what they seem.” ~ Jim Thompson
“Years ago, I heard an interview with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The interviewer said, “Do you still practice?” And he said, “I practice every day.” He said, “If I skip a day, I can hear it. If I skip two days, the conductor can hear it. And if I skip three days, the audience can hear it.” Oh, yes, you have to keep that muscle firm.” ~ Donald E. Westlake
