“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

— Flannery O’Connor

”Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action. Start as close to the end as possible.”

— Kurt Vonnegut (items 4 and 5 from his Eight Tips for How To Write A Good Short Story)

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

— Henry Rollins

“I don’t know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyeballs water.”

— Harlan Ellison