Writing Quotes

There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they mus...

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about...

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to acc...

Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance...

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits.

In any really good subject one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into wh...

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing wh...

True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision.

I think with my right hand.

Writers say two things that strike me as nonsense. One is that you must follow an absolute schedule ...

What a gulf between the self which experiences and the self which describes experience.

I'm sorry," Billy says, "but I felt it was too organized. I like ellipses and teeny jottings and spo...

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the d...

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the he...

The words ran away with me.

It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic abs...

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a ...

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

Still must the poet as of old,In barren attic bleak and cold,Starve, freeze, and fashion verses toSu...

I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that ...

The StadiumHave you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and list...

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is o...

[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, e...

Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: th...

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and o...

What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.

No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark cor...

Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks thin...

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really l...

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it...

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.

I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work — one that is just about respect...

I simply vowed to the universe that I would write forever, regardless of the result. I promised that...

Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my des...

I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I...

It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is u...

Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. M...

I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- cons...

Nevertheless the severance is rather casual and it drops a stain on our admiration of Nora. Ibsen ha...

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself with...

There is nothing quite like this novel with its rage and ragings, its discontent and angry restlessn...

They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their...

[Charlotte Bronte] had thought of every maneuver for circumventing those stony obstructions of wives...

The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories--mad wives in the attic, strange appariti...

The 'swapping' is interesting. This practice one had thought confined to certain earnest Americans i...

I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it's...

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an i...

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of peop...

I was super brainy and a proper geek at school, but there would always be a boy. But that sort of ob...

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has...

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrativ...

I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you thi...

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn...

It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all ...

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

My godfather sad that story was abut taking the chaotic jigsaw of life, making it into a picture and...

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' wa...

I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry ...

I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf'...

Often I find that poems predict what I'm going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that ...

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm al...

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I ...

In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a ...

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. ...

You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finis...

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you w...

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. ...

Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you ...

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shockproof shit detector. This is the write...

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing....

The writer must write what he has to say not speak it.

Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was try...

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that w...

You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I wa...

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately o...

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when yo...

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the wri...