Writing Quotes

I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my ...

Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least...

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of care themselves.

Always speak the truth - think before you speak - and write it down afterwards.

And ever, as the story drainedThe wells of fancy dry,And faintly strove that weary oneTo put the sub...

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!

Why do you write like you're running out of time?

Write like it matters, and it will.

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion...

. . . chasing after words like trying to grab the tails of comets.

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much,...

They're fancy talkers about themselves writers. If I had to give young writers advice I would say ...

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the I’m a Fraud phase. Yo...

But [Patrick's] character is partly based on a boy named Mark who lived across the street from me wh...

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. Y...

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

...Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? T...

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you wer...

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

Every author however modest keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cel...

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weig...

Their ghosts are gagged, their books are library flotsam,Some of their names - not all - we learnt i...

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usual...

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usual...

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usual...

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usual...

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start...

What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages,...

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbe...

I want to do something splendid… Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dea...

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a ...

I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a v...

Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luc...

Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.

Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful a...

A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown...

I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three t...

The story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we ca...

We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make ou...

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or ...

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully ri...

When I was a teen, I thought I would have to choose between my writing or my music or my art, but it...

It’s not about fancy literary prizes. It’s not about seeming impenetrable or smart or high fallutin....

I like prefaces. I read them. Sometimes I do not read any further.

Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth -- and it is this that adds t...

When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or ...

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on.

... endowing the imperfect and the preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, al...

And so too, in later years, when I began to write a book of my own, and the quality of some sentence...

The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable ...

Writing poetry is a state of free float

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it p...

A general is like a writer who wants to write a play, or a book, but whom the book itself, with the ...

You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading. As a craft it's acquired through the...

That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was think...

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society...

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl th...

If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they forc...

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much ...

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles dr...

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All ...

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe...

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no yo...

A word after a word after a word is power.

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They kn...

Bless you. Be careful. Anyone intending to meddle with words needs such blessing, such warning.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by ...

I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after...

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, y...

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations ...

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of f...

In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble o...

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

Don't you know no one can escapethe power of creatures reaching outwith breath alone?

The Other Worlds which fairy tales explore open a way for writers and storytellers to speak in Other...

Storytelling is a dangerous vocation, for the fairies punish those who return to tell their secrets.

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic...

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to c...

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a ...

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to wr...

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interes...

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succe...

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation...

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.