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The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of im...more

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Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist ni...more

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I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn'...more

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The notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual vigor and spiritual fulfillmen...more

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No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Thelonious Monk that he sealed in a tin can and labeled Campb...more

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Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.

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...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....

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All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

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The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

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Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is t...more

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All dreams continue in the beyond.

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She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origin...more

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There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to viol...more

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Gods and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means.

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If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.