My Missing Arm

“One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose---one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“She'd been hall monitor one day in the fall of her first semester of teaching, when she was just about to turn twenty-two, and she'd seen sixteen-year-old Johnny Harris swagger out the side door of the school as if he had every right in the world to do so. She followed him, suspecting he meant to sneak a cigarette or worse, and discovered him finally in the parking lot, stretched out in the back seat of some other student's car. Alone, his high-top sneakers with the hole in the left sole sticking out the window, his long legs crossed at the ankles, one arm bent behind his head for a pillow. An open book had been propped on his sweatshirted chest. Her astonishment had nearly matched his belligerence upon being discovered.”
― Karen Robards, One Summer

“If a woman had written One Day, it would have been airport fiction. Look at The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. If I had written that, it would have had a pink, fluffy cover on it. If Jenny Eugenides had written it, it would have had a pink fluffy cover on it. What is it about? It’s about a woman choosing between two men. What is The Corrections about, by Jonathan Franzen? It’s about a family, right? And I’m attacking gun control and teen suicide and end-of-life care and the Holocaust, and I’m writing women’s fiction?”
― Jodi Picoult

“As a prospective writer, I would urge you to not only read good books. Read terrible books as well, because they can be more inspiring than the good books. If you are inspired by a good book, there’s always the danger of plagiarism, of doing something that is too much like that good book. Whereas, a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that you’re reading is, ‘Jesus Christ, I could write this shit!’ That is immensely liberating — to find somebody who is published who is doing much, much worse than you. And by analyzing why they are doing so badly, this will immensely help your own style. You’ll find out all of the mistakes not to make. ‘Why did this story offend me so much?’ Analyze that. Find out why you didn’t like it. Find out all of the examples of clumsiness or bad thinking that spoiled the story for you. That will probably be a lot more helpful to your career as a writer.”
― Alan Moore