Faulkner and Butler

“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics,
good and bad, and see how they do it. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then
write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the
window.”

- William Cuthbert Faulkner

"I know a lot of people are where I was several years ago, when I was getting started with writing, wondering how they might get started as writers. And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing. Second, read every day. Read voraciously and omnivorously, whatever's out there..."

-Octavia Butler