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"I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing."
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"The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments."

"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done."

"Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing."

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it."

"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."
Explore more quotes by Donald McKay

"Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes."

"I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work."

"I do not write by any set time schedule. I realize there are many writers who follow a daily regime where they arise at 6:00 a.m., do some sort of exercise, eat breakfast and then sit down and produce words for a three to four hour period."

"To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only."

"I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing."
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