Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

We never cease wanting what we want, whether it's good for us or not.

Rewrite formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out.

Poe was the first writer to write about main characters who were bad guys or who were mad guys, and those are some of my favorite stories.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways". He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window". Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on purpose.