Good writers touch life often.

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Generally, great writers are not eclectic. Each tightly focuses his oeuvre on one idea, a single subject that ignites his passion, a subject he pursues with beautiful variation through a lifetime of work.

A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

That distinctive singular stamp of himself is one of the main reasons readers come to love an author. The way you can just tell, often within a couple paragraphs, that something is by Dickens, or Chekhov, or Woolf, or Salinger, or Coetzee, or Ozick. The quality’s almost impossible to describe or account for straight out — it mostly presents as a vibe, a kind of perfume of sensibility — and critics’ attempts to reduce it to questions of “style” are almost universally lame.

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere

Writers by nature are subversive, observant, and discerning, and their voice contains that.

As a story develops, you must willingly entertain opposite, even repugnant ideas. The finest writers have dialectical, flexible minds that easily shift points of view. They see the positive, the negative, and all shades of irony, seeking the truth of these views honestly and convincingly. This omniscience forces them to become even more creative, more imaginative, and more insightful. Ultimately, they express what they deeply believe, but not until they have allowed themselves to weight each living issue and experience all its possibilities.

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.