I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.

But suppose, asks the student of the professor, we follow all your structural rules for writing, what about that something else that brings the book alive? What is the formula for that? The formula for that is not included in the curriculum.

There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

Charm is an odorless perfume, which cannot be anchored in the chemists' test tube. It is a permeation, a radiation. It emanates from the climate of a warm human spirit, which not only contains light, but gives it off.

writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.

Nervous hands as if the fingers were dripping from them like icicles.