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At a certain point in the writing of any book, you become absolutely certain that it's terrible and is only getting more terrible with every word you write. This is normal. You just have to keep going, push your way through, and have faith that, through practice and experience and determination, you will get to the end.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

You can tell when a writer moves out of a place of struggle and into a place of comfort, and it's always a bad thing.

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.