Recent content by Paul Whybrow

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the next day – that way, you can write three or five words without being ‘creative’ and before you know it, you’re writing. Cory Doctorow

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative ... Oscar Wilde

“Writers don’t have lifestyles. They sit in little rooms and write.” Norman Mailer

Life is too short to be normal. Stay weird. Anonymous

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here." Arthur C. Clarke

“The problem is that horror is not a genre, it is an emotion. Horror is not a kind of fiction. It's a progressive form of fiction that continually evolves to meet the fears and anxieties of its times.” Douglas E. Winter

To write a great book, you must first become the book. Naval Ravikant

Real is good, interesting is better Stanley Kubrick

Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics. John Banville

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets….The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life...

“Some people talk about other people’s failures with so much pleasure that you would swear they are talking about their own successes.” Mokokoma Mokhonoana

"Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal." Voltaire

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading. Sarah Orne Jewett

I feel very grateful that for some reason I was raised to believe that I had permission to explore the creative world. I’m very aware of what a privilege that is, because most people don’t grant themselves that permission, and I really think that’s the only thing that separates people that call...

“Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.”...