On Writing

I am a big fan of inspirational quotes. Here are hundreds of them: Writers on writing.

Aaron, Jason: “If you want to be a writer, then just be a writer. Be one every day, all day.”

Achebe, Chinua: “I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.”

Aciman, André: “Writing opens up a parallel universe into which, one by one, we’ll move all of our…”

Adams, Franklin P.: “Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were…”

Aiken, Howard: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea…”

Aiken, Joan: “Why do we want to have alternate worlds…”

Alderman, Naomi: “You learn the most from doing the work, regularly, patiently, sometimes in hope, sometimes despairingly. Push on through...”

Alexie, Sherman: “I still remember the exact moment when I first understood… the purpose of a…”

Allen, Woody: “In the afternoons, Gertrude Stein and I used to…”

Allende, Isabel: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”

Anderson, Laurie Halse: “Write about the emotions you fear the most.”

Anderson, Maxwell: “The story must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of…”

Anderson, Robert: “I write to find out what I didn’t know I knew, to find out what I didn’t know I felt.”

Angelou, Maya: “The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes…”

Angelou, Maya: “Perhaps because of my long history as a dancer, actress and writer, rejection is something with which I am all too familiar…”

Angelou, Maya: “In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying we may encounter many...”

Anonymous: “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

Aristotle: “Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions — what we do — that we are happy or…”

Ashton, Kevin: “Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun…”

Asimov, Issac: “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live…”

Asimov, Isaac: ““What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy…”

Atwood, Margaret: “As for writing, most people secretly believe they themselves have a book in them…”

Atwood, Margaret: “You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book…”

August, John: “When people say, ‘Oh, I just love writing!’ I know they’re full of crap…”

Augustine: “I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress…”

Auster, Paul: “Surely it is an odd way to spend your life — sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day…”

Auster, Paul: “Becoming a writer is not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen…”

Aw, Tash: “The way I see writing is it’s a long process of terror punctuated by periods of intense, unsurpassed pleasure.”

Bach, Richard: “A professional writer is an amateur who…”

Baldwin, James: “If you’re going to be a writer, there’s nothing I can say to stop you…”

Baldwin, James: “You go into a book and you’re in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will…”

Baldwin, James: “It is true that the more one learns the less one knows. I’m still learning how to write. I don’t know what technique is. All I know is…”

Banks, Iain: “Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don’t try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing.”

Barnes, Julian: “Creation of character is, like much of fiction writing, a mixture of subjective feel and objective…”

Barnes, Julian: ““I’ve never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part…”

Barry, Kevin: “The funny thing about it all is that literary talent isn’t rare. Lots of people can write good stories with good characters and great…”

Barry, Kevin: “I finish them all. This comes out of some kind of professional pride. I finish even if I know or strongly suspect a story is…”

Barthelme, Donald: “Writing is a process of not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. The not-knowing is crucial to art…”

Barzun, Jacques: “Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper, not eternal bronze.”

Bass, Rick: “Telling a story straight from real life is only being a reporter, not a creator. You have to make your story bigger…”

Bass, Rick: “Be specific. If you can’t paint a picture of it, it’s an abstraction. If you can paint a picture of it, it’s a specificity. Specificity is the lever…”

Baxter, Charles: “To be a novelist or a short story writer, you first have to pretend…”

Beagle, Peter S.: “The best advice I know is to learn to put up with boredom and frustration. You have to sit through the dull times when nothing’s…”

Bean, Henry: “There are a million things that are distracting you and if you want an excuse not to write…”

Beattie, Anne: “People forget years and remember moments…”

Bell, James Scott: “Here is one simple rule to remember: Characters carry theme…”

Bender, Aimee: “Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language. If you write a page a day for thirty days...”

Berendt, John: “Keep a diary, but don’t just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette.”

Berger, Elizabeth: “Write like you’re on deadline, even if nobody is waiting for your work.”

Berger, Thomas: “Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.”

Bernays, Anne: “I can’t remember how many times I advised students to stop writing the sunny hours and write from where it hurts: ‘No one wants to…’”

Black, Ashley Nicole: “Writing is like riding a bike. Everyone can write, and everyone can ride a bike. But not everyone can do the Tour de France.”

Block, Lawrence: ““One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly…”

Blume, Judy: “There are no hard and fast rules for writing, and no secret tricks, because what works for one person doesn’t always work for another.”

Blume, Judy: “No one can teach you exactly how to write. Each person approaches creative writing differently. Every writer has his or her own…”

Borges, Jorge Luis: “All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay...”

Bowen, Catherine Drinker: “Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living…”

Bowen, Catherine Drinker: “For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has…”

Bowen, Elizabeth: “Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.”

Bowen, Elizabeth: “1. Dialogue should be brief. 2. It should add to the reader’s present knowledge. 3. It should eliminate the routine exchanges…”

Boyle, T.C.: “First, you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your…”

Boyle, T.C.: “I think the best endings bring you back in, rather than close things off with absolute finality. We don’t always need to know what...”

Brackett, Leigh: “Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life…”

Bradbury, Ray: “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”

Bradbury, Ray: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality may not destroy you…”

Bradbury, Ray: “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him…”

Bradbury, Ray: “…if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out…”

Bradbury, Ray: “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”

Bradbury, Ray: “Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, ‘Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today.’”

Bradbury, Ray: “Three things are in your head: First, everything you have experienced from the day of your birth until right now. Every single…”

Bradbury, Ray: ““You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief…”

Breslin, Jimmy: “Anything that isn’t writing is easy.”

Bronson, Po: “Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created?”

Bronson, Po: “Failure is part of it. You will be rejected dozens and dozens of times. The best way to prepare for it is to have something else…”

Brooks, Mel: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into…”

Brooks, Richard: “I write in toilets, on planes, when I’m walking, when I stop the car. I make notes. Whenever I can…”

Brown, Kurt: “If you don’t know what to write, talk to your subconscious, your story, or your God and…”

Brown, Rosellen: “It’s a job. It’s not a hobby. You don’t write the way you build a model airplane. You have to sit down…”

Broyles, William Jr.: “Writing really is a process of discovery. The biggest enemy is…”

Bunuel, Luis: “Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.”

Burgess, Anthony: “A character has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all…”

Burnham, Sophy: “There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the…

Burnett, W. R.: “A writer has to have an imagination — that’s what make a writer.”

Burnett, Whit: “Style has always been in my mind the author’s Self, the creative expression of that Self.”

Burroughs, Edgar Rice: “If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the…”

Cameron, James: “Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.”

Cameron, Julia: “Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness.”

Campbell, Joseph: “You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”

Campbell, John: “The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple…”

Canin, Ethan: “Don’t write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.”

Capra, Frank: “A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”

Card, Orson Scott: “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who…”

Cargill, C. Robert: “Being a writer is almost entirely about perseverance. Life is going to continuously try to keep you from writing or from getting…”

Carroll, Lewis: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there…”

Carver, Jeffrey A.: “Writing is a craft that requires both talent and acquired skills…”

Carver, Raymond: “If we’re lucky, writer and reader alike, we’ll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly…”

Carver, Raymond: “That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones… If the words are imprecise and inaccurate, the…”

Carver, Raymond: “Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications. It’s akin to style, what I’m…”

Cassavetes, John: “As an artist I feel that we must try different things — but above all we must dare to fail.”

Cather, Willa: “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves…”

Chabon, Michael: “To do your best work, whatever the discipline, takes complete immersion…”

Chabon, Michael: “A writer shapes their story to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life.”

Chandler, Raymond: “Most writers think up a plot with an intriguing situation and then proceed to fit characters into it. With me a plot, if you…”

Chandler, Raymond: “When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand…”

Chandler, Raymond: “ The challenge of screenwriting is saying much in little and then take half of…”

Chandler, Raymond: “The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.”

Chandler, Raymond: “I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me… it doesn’t have to be great writing, it doesn’t…”

Charters, Ann: “Plot is what keeps you going when you read a story, character is what stays with you…”

Chatham, Russell: “Learn where you came from, who you are, and where you’re going…”

Chayefsky, Paddy: “I write because I like to write.”

Chayefsky, Paddy: “The three-act structure is the form that I grew up in the theater with. You generally present a situation in Act I, and by the end of…”

Chekhov, Anton: “You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on…”

Chesterton, G.K.: “Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us dragons exist, but because…”

Chesterton, G.K.: “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

Chesterton, G.K.: “You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

Chiang, Ted: “I come up with an ending I like — that’s when I know I can write a story about it. I always need to have the ending in mind first.”

Chism, Tina Gordon: “I think creativity is everywhere. I see creativity with my grandmother cooking. I see it at the winery, making wine. I see it in…”

Christie, Agatha: “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”

Chute, Carolyn: “Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming…”

Clegg, Bill: “Take your time, but don’t dawdle. You have to get comfortable with experimenting and getting it wrong and also staring at the…”

Close, Del: “No scene is ever about the words being spoken.”

Coates, Ta-Nehisi: “I strongly believe that writing is an act of courage. It’s almost an act of physical courage. You get up and you have this great…”

Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle: “Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head…”

Coel, Michaela: ““Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that is uncomfortable. I dare you. In a world that entices us…”

Collins, Billy: “I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.”

Cook, Elizabeth: “Slow writing can bring a sense of saturation in the material, where the time taken in the making is experienced as present in the…”

Cook, William Wallace: “Plot, or evolution, is life responding to environment; and not only is this…”

Coover, Robert: “We needs myths to get by. We need story; otherwise…”

Cowley, Malcolm: “In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and in the end…”

Cowley, Malcolm: “In the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn’t a story.”

Coyne, Kevin: “I have a mantra in class: ‘Readers do no work.’ If you’re James Joyce or Toni Morrison or any other writer lavishly blessed with the gifts…”

Crews, Harry: “Writers spend all their time preoccupied with just the things…”

Crichton, Michael: “Sneaking up on it sometimes helps: I’ve found I can be very productive for an hour before dinner…”

Cron, Lisa: “Stories instill meaning directly into our belief system the same way experience does — not by telling us what is right, but by allowing us...”

Cron, Lisa: “The most important element of any story is to make the reader want to know what happens next. Period. Everything else is gravy.”

Cron, Lisa: “Story is about an internal struggle, not an external one. It’s about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome…”

Cron, Lisa: “Learn about the protagonist’s specific internal problem before you create the plot, so your novel has the juice to instantly captivate your…”

Crowe, Cameron: “If someone’s on a soapbox saying this is what I am…”

Dahl, Roald: “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it!”

Dahl, Roald: “When you’re writing, it’s rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view…”

Dahl, Roald: “”I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and…”

Decens, Emily Logan: “I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas…”

DeLillo, Don: “First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way…”

DeLillo, Don: “First, you look for discipline and control. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there’s a higher place…”

DeWitt, Annie: “It’s important to talk about the reality of being a writer. You wonder what direction your life is going in without knowing whether…”

Dexter, Colin: “I think you’ve got to be prepared to write a load of nonsense to start with…”

Diaz, Natalie: “Writing is an extension of my body. I am seeking the body on the page, even the broken body, even the ecstatic body…”

Dickey, James: “Any time I get a little money that I can spend on myself, I buy…”

Dillard, Anne: “”Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe powerful…”

Dillard, Anne: “I love to sock the reader into some odd time and place and let them breathe there and love it, and love the world for having such a place — and then to call for fireworks there with only a ballpoint pen.”

Dillard, Annie: “Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming…”

Doctorow, E.L.: “Writing is like driving at night through the fog. You can only see…”

Dr. Seuss: “It has often been said/there’s so much to be read, you never can cram/all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds/more words…”

Dolnick, Ben: “When you find yourself stumped, when a character seems to want to do this but the story seems to demand that she do that, it’s time to…”

Dougherty, Joseph: “Writing is easy. Being a writer is murder.”

Diane Duane: “You make a list of the ten things that have to happen in your novel. Then, you list ten things that have to happen…”

Dubus, Andrew: “Some of my characters now feel more grateful about simple things…”

Dubus, Andre: “Good fiction comes from the same place as our dreams. The desire to step into someone else’s dream world is a universal impulse that’s shared by us all.”

Dubus, Andre: “My guiding force and principle for shaping the story is to just follow the headlights. That’s how the architecture is revealed.”

Dubus, Andre: “But during my very early writing, certainly before I’d published, I began to learn characters will come alive if you back the fuck off.”

Dunmore, Helen: “A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.”

Dunne, Dominick: “Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole…”

Dunthorne, Joe: “Writer’s block basically doesn’t exist. It’s a way of saying the writing you are trying to do came out so badly you’re not willing to go...”

DuVernay, Ava: “Just know that everyone’s writing is terrible. Until it’s not. No one’s stuff is right immediately. You gotta work it. Refine it. Shape it…”

DuVernay, Ava: “It’ll be bad before it’s good. Keep writing through the bad.”

Eagan, Jennifer: “I feel tired of exposition and backstory; the more you can suggest without spelling out, the more you can encompass in the same...”

Eagan, Jennifer: “You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly. Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up…”

Eagan, Jennifer: “Most people who write seriously tend to be pretty solitary people. But that does not mean that I can work in isolation and know if…

Eckhart, Meister: “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”

Eco, Umberto: “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”

Eco, Umberto: “I simply believe that at the end of the day a story is always richer — it is an idea reshaped into an event, informed by a character…”

Edison, Thomas: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work…”

Eggers, Dave: “What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the…”

Eliot, T.S.: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects…”

Ellington, Duke: “I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.”

Ellis, Warren: “The point is getting it all down, even if it’s crap or incomprehensible to anyone but you.”

Ellison, Harlan: “Don’t be afraid. That simple; don’t let them scare you. There’s nothing they can do…”

Ellison, Harlan: “You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.”

Ellison, Harlan: “Dreaming and writing are Adam and Eve of the same process. Long before one ever writes a story, one works a story…”

Ephron, Nora: “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something…”

Ephron, Nora: “You better make them care about what you think. It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in...’”

Eugenides, Jeffrey: “A narrative voice allows you to say things you couldn’t otherwise. It frees you from the prison of the ego and the limitations of...”

Evison, Jonathan: “When I’m writing character well, it’s not a very cerebral process. I feel the events rather than think them. I’ve gotta be inside the…”

Fassler, Joe: “Contrary to popular wisdom, being ‘blocked’ is not about running out of things to say. Instead, it’s succumbing to the unrealistic…”

Faulkner, William: “I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, if I were not married and had children, I would be a writer. I’ve heard people say, ‘If I could just…’”

Faulkner, William: “I write only when I’m inspired. Fortunately I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”

Faulkner, William: “The artist’s only responsibility is his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a…”

Faulkner, William: “The only thing worth writing about is the conflict in the human heart.”

Faulkner, William: “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move…”

Faulkner, William: “Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.”

Finch, Janet: “The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them…”

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you’ve got something to say.”

Ferber, Edna: “I think that to write well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.”

Ferrante, Elena: “Telling stories really is a kind of power. Stories draw readers into their web, and engage them by putting them to work, body...”

Fitch, Janet: “The difficulty is that we create protagonists we love. And we love them like our children. We want to protect them from harm…”

Fitch, Janet: “Don’t just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone…”

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: “Begin with an individual and you find you have created a type; begin with a type…”

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”

Flanagan, Richard: “The great thing about writing is that it can be produced in sub-optimal — even atrocious — conditions. And so many of the most…”

Flaubert, Gustave: “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and…”

Fleming, Ian: “I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to…”

Foley, Dennis: “Hollywood is the only town where you can not fail. You can only quit trying…”

Foner, Naomi: “As the characters become alive to me, there are things that I think they’re going to do that they refuse…”

Foote, Horton: “It’s a mysterious thing — writing. Like acting: You can study techniques until you drop over on your face. Then there’s the X factor…”

Fowler, Gene: “Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until…”

Franco, James: “They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.”

Frayn, Michael: “You have to come to some arrangement with them [characters]…”

Frey, James: “The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.”

Frost, Robert: “Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.”

Gabbert, Elisa: “Writing isn’t hard the way physical labor is hard; it’s hard the way chess is hard. What’s hard about art is getting any good — and then…”

Gaiman, Neil: “Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

Gaiman, Neil: “When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art.”

Gaiman, Neil: “Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now…”

Gaiman, Neil: “You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six…”

Gaiman, Neil: “One word after another. That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled…”

Gaiman, Neil: ““The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all…”

Gaitskill, Mary: “I think there are very few rules that can’t be broken. I think there is only one that is very difficult to break. It’s that something...”

Gale, Bob: “The three things that matter most in a story are characters, characters and characters.”

Gardner, John: “Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace…”

Gardner, John: “In nearly all good fiction, the basic — all but inescapable plot form is…”

Gardner, John: “Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace to stand…”

Garlan, Patsy: “The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is: Don’t answer the phone.”

Garrison, Eve: “A notepad by the bedside accounts for half the earnings of my livelihood.”

Gary, John: “What will keep people reading is a desire to spend more time with the characters you’re presenting on the page.”

Gass, William H: “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”

Gaylin, Alison: For every one of my books, there’s been a ‘cut file,’ sometimes hundreds of pages long, of stuff that (much as I may have loved it)…”

Geissel, Theodor Suess (Dr. Seuss): “You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive…”

Gelbart, Larry: “There’s only one way I know to come back after a failure. And that’s fast. It’s the one sure way to revive your confidence in yourself.”

Gelbart, Larry: “One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.”

Gelbart, Larry: “Writers, to a man, to a woman, welcome any reason, any excuse, not to write. I have, on occasion, facing a deadline, found it…”

Gervais, Ricky: “Remember, it’s better to create something and be criticized than to create nothing and criticize others.”

Gibran, Kahil: “All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind…”

Gide, André: “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore…”

Gide, André: “The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak…”

Gide, André: The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”

Gilbert, Elizabeth: “Writing is not like dancing or modeling; where — if you missed it by age 19 — you’re finished. It’s never too late.”

Gilbert, Elizabeth: “Writing can be a very dramatic pursuit, full of catastrophes and disasters and attempts that fail. My path became…”

Ginsberg, Allen: “To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint…”

Glass, Ira: “It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

Glass, Ira: “The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It’s all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that atoms are dissipating out…”

Godden, Rumer: “A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through…”

Goldberg, Natalie: “Sometimes people say to me, ‘I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job…”

Goldman, William: “All basic human truths are known. And what we [writers] try to do as best we can…”

Goldman, William: “Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it.”

Goodman, Allegra: Now you may ask, what if my characters won’t talk to me? What if they won’t even visit? The only answer is to think and think…”

Gorman, Amanda: “Procrastination can be a really helpful creative tool. When I procrastinate, I try to do it with intention. I think my writing tends to be...”

Gould, Emily: “We read a lot about writers who have a ‘butt in chair’ philosophy, who crank out a minimum of 1,000 words every day rain or…”

Green, John: “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts.”

Green, John: “When I think about [characters], I like to think of them in their relationships to each other…”

Green, John: “Every single day, I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice…”

Greene, Graham: “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead…”

Greene, Graham: “Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the…”

Guare, John: “I loved Feydeau’s one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as…”

Guinness, Harry: Over-writing is a bigger problem than under-writing. It’s much more likely you’ve written too much than too little. It’s a lot easier...”

Gunn, James: “I don’t believe in writers’ block. I think that’s just writers judging themselves. Allow yourself to write shit!”

Haddon, Mark: “It’s like climbing a mountain — you get some fantastic views when you pause or when you get to the top, but the actual process…”

Hale, Shannon: “The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I’m forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle.”

Hamsun, Knut: “So sure as there is any worth in these pages, so sure am I saved…”

Harmon, Graycie: “Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.”

Harmon, Graycie: “Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear — and devils, too.”

Harris, Joanne: “Creating suspense involves making the reader ask a question, then withholding the answer for as long as possible, without losing their…”

Harrison, Jim: “Being a writer requires an intoxication with language…”

Harrison, Kathryn: “It’s funny, I teach writing, and before I taught I never would have guessed the thing I say most often is: ‘Please stop thinking.’”

Hartley, L. P.: “It’s better to write about things you feel than things you know about.”

Hass, Robert: “It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

Hayes, Harold: “The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds.”

Heilein, Robert A.: “My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to…”

Heller, Joseph: “Every writer I know has trouble writing.”

Helprin, Mark: “Assuming that you are a professional and that you know how to write, why would you be unable to do so? If an electrician said, I have…”

Hemingway, Ernest: “I write one page of masterpiece to 99 pages of shit…”

Hemingway, Ernest: “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.”

Hemingway, Ernest: “When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first…”

Hemingway, Ernest: “There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like…”

Hemingway, Ernest: “When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.”

Hemon, Aleksandar: “Comedy is the riskiest form, the riskiest genre. There’s a simple logic to comedy, especially when it comes to film or…”

Higgins, Colin: “The job of the screenwriter is to run the film in the reader’s imagination. And nothing should get in the way of that.”

Higgins, Colin: “On a metaphysical level, I do believe the story’s already written in some other dimension…”

Higgins, George V.: “A man or woman who does not write good dialog is not a first-rate writer.”

Highsmith, Patricia: “A nap clears the head wonderfully, besides giving fresh energy. I realize that about half the people of the world cannot nap…”

Hill, Napoleon: “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”

Hills, Rust: “We will find character and action even more inseparably entwined in fiction than they appear to be in life….”

Hills, Rust: “Sequential causality is generally considered to be very important in plotting. It is often thought to be the difference between a…”

Hirsch, Brayden: “Read, read, read. If you don’t study how the masters do things, you’ll never be a…”

Hitchens, Christopher: “If you want to write, it must be the thing not that you want to do, or would like to do. It must be the thing you feel…”

Holywhitemountain, Sterling: “The ultimate subject of fiction is time, which is to say death. Until I see a thing stand in relief against the backdrop of death, I don’t understand what its value is.”

Hornby, Nick: “Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down…”

House, Silas: “Above all, give us characters we will carry with us after meeting them. Give us people we will remember as if they were real. The books…”

Howe, Susan: “I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters…”

Hughes, John: “The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is…”

Hunter, Stephen: “Fuck research! I say this, knowing that my works are thought to be well-researched and I am proud of the research in them…”

Hunter, Stephen: “It’s baseball, not football — a long season, slumps, errors, humiliations, bad feelings, bad weather, jet lag, all that stuff, and you...”

Hurst, Fannie: “I’m not happy when I’m writing, but I’m more unhappy when I’m not.”

Ionesco, Eugene: “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking…”

Irving, John: “When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it…”

Irving, Washington: “There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse…”

Ishiguro, Kazuo: “Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings…”

Ishiguro, Kazuo: “I have two desks. One has a writing slope and the other has a computer on it. The computer dates from 1996. It’s not connected...”

Iyer, Pico: “Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to…”

James, Clive: “The only thing I’ve got better at as the years have gone by is I’ve grown more resigned to the fact that it comes hard… the secret is not to…”

James, Henry: “What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?”

Jami, Criss: “Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”

Jarmusch, Jim: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination…”

Jenkins, Mark: “In the end, you either have the cojones to write and keep writing, or you don’t. No amount of good advice…”

Jio, Sarah: “I keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: ‘Write What Scares You.’ I’ve learned that tapping into the hard stuff is what…”

Johnson, Samuel: “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

Jones, Edward P.: “You’re always becoming a writer…”

Jong, Erica: “We may be perishable, but creativity and creation are not…”

Junger, Sebastian: “I’ve tried to figure out what good writing is. I know it when I read it. The closest I’ve come is that there’s a rhythm to the writing...”

Kanin, Garson: “All the stories have been told in one form or another. The only thing that makes a successful play is the delineation of character.”

Karr, Mary: “Writers hate formulas and checklists. It’s way more fun to masquerade as a natural shaman who channels beautiful pages as the…”

Kasdan, Larry: “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”

Kasischke, Laura: “Writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.”

Kavenna, Joanna: “I think doubt, questioning and uncertainty are very dynamic — in life and in fiction. Certainty is static. Doubt propels…”

Kelland, Clarence Budington: “I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.”

Keller, Thomas: “If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t…”

Kelley, David: “The thing about writing is you may never have written a thing in your life…”

Kennedy, William: “When I write, I live with my characters. It’s like going to work. You see the people at the next desk in full regalia all the time…”

Kerouac, Jack: “Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.”

Kesey, Ken: “One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know…”

Keyes, Ralph: “Working writers aren’t those who have eliminated their anxiety. They are the ones who keep scribbling while their heart races and stomach churns. They learn how to keep writing even as fear tries to yank their hand from the page.” #writing

Khouri, Callie: “Part of being a writer is getting yourself quiet enough that the character can just…”

Khouri, Callie: “The world will provide you with every imaginable obstacle, but the one most difficult to overcome will be the lack of faith in yourself.”

Kincaid, Jamaica: “All of these declarations of what writing ought to be are nonsense. You write what you write, then either it holds up or it doesn’t.”

King, Larry L.: “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”

King, Stephen: “A book won’t stand or fall on the very first line of prose. Yet a really good first line can do so much to establish that crucial sense of…”

King, Stephen: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs…”

King, Stephen: “Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft. You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias...”

King, Stephen: “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”

King, Stephen: “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

King, Stephen: “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers.”

King, Stephen: “A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

King, Stephen: “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the...”

Kingsolver, Barbara: “Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say…”

Klemer, Katerina Stoykova: “Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don’t keep space in your head for writing, you won’t write…”

Koontz, Dean: “I have more self-doubt than any writer I’ve ever known. The positive aspect of self-doubt — if you can channel it into useful activity…”

Koppelman, Brian: “Everyday, it’s about building a practice that enables you to try and forget that you’re afraid.”

Kosova, Besa: “Writers write while dreamers procrastinate.”

Krull, Kathleen: “Respect the genre you’re writing in. In an effort to put your own stamp on it…”

Kubrick, Stanley: I don’t think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have…”

Kumar, Amitava: “When I lace my boots, before stepping out for my walk, I’m entering a ritual. I’m mindful of the notepaper and the small yellow pencil...”

Kushner, Tony: “All I really know about writing is that if you’re a writer, writing is what you do…”

Kyle, Aryn: “Finishing a story is truly the most amazing experience in the world. It’s like being on the most fantastic, perfect drugs…”

L’Heureux, John: “Young writers often confuse dialogue with conversation, under the assumption the closer you get to reality, the more convincing…”

Le Gallienne, Eva: “It is fatal to be safe in the pursuit of the arts. You work for something else, not merely for yourself. It cannot merely be a career...”

LaGravenese, Richard: “Is this a story I want to tell? Is this a world I want to be in? There’s got to be…”

Lamb, Wally: “‘Look, don’t just stare at the pages,’ I used to tell my students. ‘Become the characters. Live inside the book.’”

Lambuth, David: “The fewer the words used, the more concentrated the attention; and the greater…”

Lamott, Anne: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people…”

Lamott, Anne: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start…”

Lamott, Anne: “The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”

Lamott, Anne: “If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal.”

Lamott, Anne: “How to write: Stop not writing. Get and keep your butt in chair. Write really bad small sections of the whole — passages, moments…”

Lamott, Anne: “Stop NOT writing. Just do it, badly. Write the thing you need or want to write, that you are avoiding. That avoidance is costing you…”

L’Amour, Louis: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

Larsen, Reif: “We often forget that novels have deep roots in storytelling, because books are objects, things you hold and read alone in your…”

Larson, Erik: “My favorite ‘trick’ is to stop writing at a point where I can pick up the next day. I’ll stop in mid-paragraph, often mid-sentence. It makes…”

L’Engle, Madeleine: “Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of…”

L’Engle, Madeleine: “Just write a little bit every day. Even if it’s for only half an hour — write, write, write.”

L’Heureux, John: “Dialogue is not conversation. Dialogue is a construct; it is artificial; it is much more efficient and believable than real conversation.”

Lahiri, Jhumpa: “I think ‘writer’s block’ is a natural part of the creative process for almost all writers… I have written for long enough to accept these…”

Lamott, Anne: “Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know…”

Lamott, Anne: “I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer…”

Latet, Carrie: “If I’m trying to sleep, the ideas won’t stop. If I’m trying to write, there appears a barren…”

le Carré, John: “‘Cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘Cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.”

Lee, Harper: “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent…”

Le Guin, Ursula K.: “If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn’t flow...”

Le Guin, Ursula K.: “A story is, after all, and before everything else, dynamic: it starts Here, because it’s going There. Its life principle is...”

Le Guin, Ursula K.: “Dreams are lovely, but passion is what an artist needs — a passion for the work. That’s all that can carry you through the hard…”

Le Guin, Ursula K.: “Anton Chekhov gave some advice about revising a story: first, he said, throw out the first three pages. As a young writer…”

Leigh, Stephen: “You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break…”

Leonard, Elmore: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Leonard, Elmore: “I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and…”

Leonard, Elmore: “The writer has to have patience, the perseverance to just sit there alone and grind…”

Lessing,Doris: “I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if…”

Levertov, Denise: “Let me walk through fields of paper, touching with my wand, dry stems…”

Lewis, C.S.: “It doesn’t matter what we write so long as we write continually as well as we can.”

Lewis, C.S.: “You can make anything by writing.”

Lewis, C.S.: “What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age…”

Lewis, Sinclair: “It is impossible to discourage the real writers — they don’t give a damn what you say…”

Lewis, Sinclair: “People read fiction for emotion… not for information.”

Li, Yiyun: “Your characters are like children. You give birth to these children, but you have to send them into the world and then they have to live their…”

Linklater, Richard: “To me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.”

Linklater, Richard: “Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.”

Lish, Gordon: “I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance…”

Litt, Toby: “To go from being a competent writer to being a great writer, I think you have to risk being — or risk being seen as — a bad writer.”

Lively, Penelope: “We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know…”

Lochhead, Seth: “Let me ruin storytelling for you: if bad things are happening now, good things will happen by the end…”

London, Jack: “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club…”

Lopate, Phillip: “Part of the storytelling ability is simply the anticipation of boredom and the introduction of a sudden surprise. To be a good…”

Lovecraft, H.P.: “No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”

Lovecraft, H.P.: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear…”

Mailer, Norman: “Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day…”

Mailer, Norman: “I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing...”

Maass, Donald: “Secondary character can serve to amplify what’s going on, but they are more useful…”

Mailer, Norman: ““We tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of life. Narrative is reassuring…”

Maisel, Eric: “Once in a while a piece comes out whole and reads well from beginning to end…”

Malamud, Bernard: “First drafts are for learning what your story is about.”

Mallon, Thomas: “My prescription for writer’s block is to face the fact that there is no such thing. It’s an invented condition, a literary version…’

Mamet, David: “If I’m not writing for the audience, if I’m not writing to make it easier for them, then…”

Mamet, David: “People may or may not say what they mean, but they always say something designed…”

Mamet, David: “Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they…”

Mamet, David: “A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.”

Manguso, Sarah: “Writers must labor from a vague feeling, usually some large, old emotion, and in so laboring, come to understand the qualities...”

Manguso, Sarah: “You must read everything, and you must let it all the way into your life, all the way into the part of you that makes writing…”

Mantel, Hilary: “If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise…”

Mantel, Hilary: “I don’t think writing makes you happy… I think it makes for a life that by its very nature has to be unstable, and if it ever became stable, you’d be finished.”

Marks, Justin: “That faith, that if you just put the bad, easy version of a scene on the page, the good…”

Márquez, Gabriel García: “Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry…”

Marsh, Ngaio: “Please don’t entertain the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the…”

Martin, George R.R.: “You have to interpret ‘Write what you know’ much more broadly than that…”

Martin, George R.R.: ”I’ve always said there are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners.”

Martin, Lauren: “One word at a time. One sentence. One book. It mimicked the structure of life. One moment. One day. One life. As books were…”

Martin, Lauren: “Stay present. Stay with what’s in front of you. Don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t worry about the middle and the ending, just...”

Martin, Lauren: “Writing a book, I quickly found out, was a crash course in anxiety. Years of being locked in a room with nothing but my thoughts…”

Martin, Steve: “I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but…”

Mattison, Alice: “One way to use coincidence and make it work is to have nothing turn on it. Coincidences feel illegitimate when they solve…

Maugham, W. Somerset: “You can never know enough about your characters.”

Maugham, W. Somerset: “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t…”

Mason, Bobbie Ann: “I have always found it difficult to start with a definite idea about a character…”

Mayle, Peter: “Best advice on writing I’ve ever received: Finish.”

McCann, Colum: “I don’t know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story…”

McCann, Colum: ““The terror of the white page never goes away, no matter how much you publish. Do you know how terrified I was this morning…”

McCarthy, Cormac: “I never had doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure…”

McDermott, Alice: “The continually reassuring thing is that we’re all novices when we start a new work.”

McGrory, Mary: “If there is a secret to writing, I haven’t found it yet. All I know is you need to sit down, clear…”

McHugh, Laura: “If it’s important enough, you won’t have any excuses. You’ll sit in the chair as long as it takes, you’ll write as many drafts as you need to…”

McCullers, Carson: “The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer…”

McMillan, Terry: If today was not a productive day don’t beat yourself to death over it. Wake up…”

McPhee, John: “A writer has to have some kind of compulsive drive to do his work. If you don’t have it…”

McQuarrie, Christopher: “Strong characters act despite their fear, not because of it.”

Melville, Herman: “It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”

Mencken, H.L.: “There is always a sheet of paper. There is always a pen. There is always a way out…”

Meyers, Nancy: “I think it’s a mistake to write something you think people will like, or a combination idea…”

Michalko, Michael: “Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in…”

Michener, James: “I am always interested in why young people become writers…”

Michener, James: “I love writing. I love the swirl of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

Miller, Arthur: “There really are no characters in plays; there are relationships.”

Miller, Henry: “Writing is its own reward.”

Miller, Henry: “What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with problems in solitude…”

Miller, Henry: “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly…”

Miller, Henry: “I had been writing for fifteen years and getting nowhere. Everything I had written was derivative, influenced by others. Then finally...”

Miranda, Lin-Manuel: “You write until the rust comes out of the faucet and it’s clear water. Then you write down the clear water.”

Miranda, Lin-Manuel: “If you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere…”

Miranda, Lin-Manuel: “You have to live with the notion of, ‘If I don’t write this, no one’s going to write it. If I die, this idea dies with me.’”

Mitchell, David: “Get the structure wrong and you blow up shortly after take off.”

Moore, Alan: “To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head — and they end up as a material thing, like a book…”

Moore, Donald: “Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either.”

Moore, Lorrie: “So much about having a manuscript accepted is out of your hands: the blood sugar level of a reader, the slant of light across a page…”

Morris, Tess: “Most writers I know all have similar personalities in many ways. We’re all kind of confident, but also a wreck and anxious,but also happy…”

Morris, Wright: “Writers have an island, a center of refuge, within themselves…”

Morrison, Edmond: “Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, the fitting of them together…”

Morrison, Toni: “It’s that being open, not scratching for it, not digging for it, not constructing something, but being open to the situation and trusting…”

Morrison, Toni: “When I teach creative writing, I always speak about how you have to learn how to read your work; I don’t mean enjoy it because you...”

Morrison, Van: “There are not many roads. There is only one road, infinitely connected…”

Mosley, Walter: “The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. What do I mean by this? I mean that…”

Mosley, Walter: “If you write every day, the next day ideas have bubbled up from someplace that you had no idea was there.”

Mosley, Walter: “I meet my characters the way I encounter people in life — at a place and in a situation where I have less knowledge than I’d like…”

Mosley, Walter: “It doesn’t matter what time of day you work, but you have to work every day because creation, like life, is always slipping away…”

Moyers, Bill: “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”

Murakami, Haruki: “The first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Absorb as many stories as you physically can. Introduce yourself...”

Murakami, Haruki: “What’s needed for a writer of fiction — at least one who hopes to write a novel — is the energy to focus every day for half a year...”

Murakami, Haruki: “Remember where E.T. assembles a transmitting device from the junk he pulls out of his garage? Putting together a good…”

Murakami, Haruki: There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.”

Murakami, Haruki: “You have to believe you have the ability to tell the story, to strike the vein of water, to make the pieces of the puzzle fit...”

Murray, Donald M.: “Don’t market yourself. Editors and readers don’t know what they want until they…”

Murray, Donald M.: “Put your notes away before you begin a draft. What you remember is probably what should be remembered; what you forget is...”

Myers, Benjamin: “Writing is magical. How else to describe the ability to physically and emotionally impact upon a stranger at the other side of the…”

Newman, Randy: “Don’t let the critic become bigger than the creator. Don’t let it strangle you. Write something down. Do something…”

Nichols, Mike: “Every scene is either a fight, a seduction, or a negotiation.”

Nissan, Colin: “A writer’s brain is full of little gifts, like a piñata at a birthday party. It’s also full of demons, like a piñata in a mental hospital…”

Nietzsche, Friedrich: “All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting...”

Nissan, Colin: “Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of…”

O’Brien, Tim: “No book ever gets written by thinking about it or going bowling or playing golf. You have to put your butt down…”

O’Connell, Mark: “Self-doubt is the best friend and the worst enemy of the writer…”

O’Connor, Flannery: “You can’t clobber any reader while he’s looking. You divert his attention, then…”

O’Connor, Flannery: “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

O’Connor, Flannery: “If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.”

O’Connor, Flannery: “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”

O’Connor, Flannery: “I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.”

O’Connor, Flannery: I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. You may be able to do without them if you have genius…”

O’Connor, Frank: ““There are three necessary elements in a story — exposition, development, and drama…”

O’Hara, John: “Life goes on, and for the sake of verisimilitude and realism, you cannot possibly give the impression of an ending: you must let...”

O’Neill, Eugene: “Keep on writing, no matter what! That’s the most important thing. As long as you have a job on hand…”

Oates, Joyce Carol: “The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”

Oates, Joyce Carol: “The character on the page determines the prose — its music, its rhythms, the range and limit of its vocabulary — yet, at the outset…”

Okri, Ben: “We are a people who are massaged by fictions; we grow up in a sea of narratives and myths, the perpetual invention of stories…”

Okri, Ben: “The highest kind of writing belongs to the realm of grace. Talent is part of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret…”

Oliver, Mary: “Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions… privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils...”

Ondaatje, Michael: “I don’t like to throw characters into a plot as though it were a raging torrent where they are swept along.”

Orlean, Susan: “Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.”

Orlean, Susan: “You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.”

Orlean, Susan: “Before I write the lead of a piece, I think the hardest part is how to begin. Then, once I have that done, I think…”

Orlean, Susan: “Being a writer means you are running a small business, manufacturing sentences, and the foreman of the factory, and the guy...”

Orlean, Susan: “Each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories, a private library of a life lived. If you can take something...”

Ozick, Cynthia: “If we had to say what writing is, we would describe it essentially as an act of courage.”

Ozick, Cynthia: “The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is: ‘Write with authority.’”

Pace, Donzae: “If I fall asleep with a pen in my hand, don’t remove it — I might be writing in my dreams.”

Pamuk, Orhan: “Literature is about happiness, about preserving your childishness all your life…”

Patchett, Ann: “Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice…”

Patchett, Ann: “At every stage of writing a book, there is a sense of If only … If only I could find the time to write and if only I could figure out the…”

Patchett, Ann: “People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to write dialogue…”

Patterson, Richard North: “The writer must always leave room for the characters to grow and change. If you move your characters from plot…”

Pauling, Linus: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Penn, Arthur: “I would like to persuade those with dreams and talent to keep at it, despite the fact luck hasn’t noticed you yet. You have to believe it will…”

Piercy, Marge: “The real writer is one who really writes.”

Plath, Sylvia: “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt…”

Plath, Sylvia: “Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”

Platt, Norbet: “The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us…”

Popova, Maria: “Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming when we let the…”

Porter, Katherine Anne: “If I didn’t know the ending, I wouldn’t begin. I always write my last line, my last paragraph, my last page first.”

Pound, Ezra: “Make it new.”

Pratchett, Terry: “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Pressfield, Steven: “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable…”

Pronzini, Bill: “Dialogue which does not move the story along, or add to the mood of the story, or have an easily definable reason for being there…”

Provost, Gary: “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous…”

Pratchett, Terry: “There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.”

Pratchett, Terry: ““First draft: Let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: Hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: Comb…”

Pressfield, Steven: “I get up, take a shower, have breakfast. I read the paper, brush my teeth. If I have phone calls to make, I make them. I’ve got my…”

Price, Richard: “A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful…”

Price, Richard: “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war…”

Priestley, J.B.: “If all feels hopeless, if that famous ‘inspiration’ will not come… go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge…”

Proulx, Anne: “What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, ‘Write what you know.’ It is the most tiresome and stupid advice...”

Proust, Marcel: “The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.”

Proverb (Chinese): “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand…”

Puig, Manuel: “You cannot impose anything on characters. They help you, they give you all, but you have to respect them.”

Pullman, Philip: “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

Quinn, Daniel: “Dialogue is thinking about something with two minds instead of one.”

Rascoe, Burton: “What no [spouse] can understand is a writer is working when he’s staring out of…”

Ray, Billy: “I’ve never sat down at the computer because I was being paid to write…”

Rebeck, Theresa: Theresa Rebeck: “While I usually have a vague idea of an ending when I start writing, I don’t want everything set in stone. If you…”

Renard, Jules: “Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if…”

Renard, Jules: “The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place…”

Rhodes, Richard: “Writing a screenplay must look easy, since everybody in America seems to have one…”

Rhodes, Richard: “If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is…”

Rhodes, Richard: “I like writing very much. I often ask my writing friends if they like to write, and they always say they don’t. They love the research…”

Richler, Mordecai: “Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time…”

Riddell, Brad: “Scripts are actor bait, plain and simple — no matter the medium. So it all starts with character and concept.”

Rilke, Rainer Maria: “What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and…”

Riordan, Rick: “I tell aspiring writers you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go.”

Robbins, Tom: “Write every day without fail… even if you are savagely hung over and your grandmother has just fallen out…”

Roberts, Nora: “You can fix anything but a blank page.”

Roberts, Nora: “You have to have the three D’s: drive, discipline and desire. If you’re missing any one of those three, you can have all the talent in the...”

Roff, Don: “If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier…”

Rossio, Terry: “My lousy way of getting it [a script] done is better than your great way of not doing it.”

Rossio, Terry: “Every story you tell is either fundamentally about how to live, or how to die. There are classics in both camps, but I prefer the former.”

Rossio, Terry: “Writing is ten percent burnishing the good, and ninety percent scrubbing out the bad.”

Rothfuss, Patrick: “Magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house…”

Rowling, J.K.: “You have to resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. It’s like learning…”

Rowling, J.K.: “The discipline involved in finishing a piece of creative work is something on which you can truly pride yourself.”

Rudnick, Paul: “As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90% procrastination…”

Rushdie, Salman: “Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded.”

Rushdie, Salman: “Human nature is the same in all places, in all times, in all languages. And that makes it the great subject of any writer’s life, just...”

Rushdie, Salman: “I give it the first energy of the day. When I get up, I go to my office and start writing. I’m still in my pajamas. I haven’t even…”

Russell, David O.: “I have billions of ideas. The problem is making them as good as they can be…”

Russo, Richard: “Novelists — especially novelists who paint on a broad canvas — are generally not given to undue anxiety, I think. The task is so…”

Ryan, Patrick: “My starting point is always the character. Person + event + reaction = what next? If something like setting or plot or a line of...”

Ryan, Patrick: “Who’s your ideal reader? Don’t imagine someone who loves your work and gets what you’re trying to do. Imagine the most impatient…”

Sacks, Oliver: “I am a storyteller, for better and for worse. I suspect that a feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition, going…”

Sacks, Oliver: “The act of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place where I am totally…”

Sackville-West, Vita: “It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by…”

Safire, William: “Do not put statements in the negative form. And don’t start sentences with a…”

Sagan, Françoise: “Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another…”

Saks, Soll: “You have to be brave to take out that white sheet of paper and put on it words that could…”

Salter, James: “Writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the joy of putting into…”

Salvatore, R.A.: “If you can quit, then quit. If you can’t quit, you’re a writer.”

Saroyan, William: “Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make. They make them for their own protection, and to Hell with them.”

Saunders, George: “For me, writing a book is not about knowing something and then conveying it. It’s certainly not about getting away with…”

Saunders, George: “I try to base my revision on a re-reading of what I’ve done so far, imitating a first-time reader. Just SEE what it’s doing. Read...”

Saunders, George: “My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with ‘P’ on this side (‘Positive’) and ’N’ on this side (‘Negative’)…”

Saunders, George: “The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are…”

Saunders, George: “In this model of fiction, the writer is asking, ‘What would you like to say, story?’ rather than ordering, ‘O.K., story, here’s...’”

Saunders, George: “My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the...”

Sayles, John: “A script is to a movie as a blueprint is to a building. So many of the things that will later be major, visceral aspects of the storytelling…”

Scalzi, John: “Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different.”

Schaffer, Bernard: “Take care of your family. They need you and love you. Make time for them. Then stop screwing around and finish your damn book.”

Schrader, Paul: “The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We are all in the dirty laundry business and we’re being…”

Schulman, Tom: “If you think writers create from nothing or that writing is a lonely occupation…”

Sedgwick, Icy: “Let’s face it, characters are the bedrock of your fiction. Plot is just a series of actions that happen in a sequence, and without…”

See, Carolyn: “You want to know your villains very well indeed or you’re better advised not to go inside their heads at all.”

See, Carolyn: “Henry James said, ‘What is character without action?’ Your character doesn’t have to jump off a building, but what does he do when…”

See, Carolyn: ““Respect your first draft! It’s your child, just a little uncoordinated and unkempt. The fact you wrote it makes it significant...”

Seidler, David: “Creativity is tapping into a hidden source. That’s what fascinates me. To be in touch with the unconscious or subconscious pool...”

Semple, Lorenzo Jr.: “The blank page is the greatest moment of writing a script… be happy that you have…”

Serling, Rod: “Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of…”

Serling, Rod: “The instinct of creativity must be followed by the act.”

Serling, Rod: “Nothing in the way of a world tour or a college education begets better writing than the simple process of doing it.”

Shakespeare, William: “If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me.”

Shanley, John Patrick: “I can’t stand half the stuff I write, but I have to write it to get to the other half.”

Shanley, John Patrick: “No is not an answer. It’s nothing. Never dwell on a no. There’s nothing there. Yes is waiting for you…”

Shapiro, Dani: “The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection.”

Shapiro, Dani: “My internal life as a writer has been a constant battle with the small, whispering voice (well, sometimes it shouts) that tells me I can’t do it.”

Sheldon, Sidney: “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.”

Simenon, Georges: “Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect… cut it.”

Simpson, Helen: “The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying ‘Faire et se taire’…”

Singer, Isaac Bashevis: “God gave us so many emotions, and so many strong ones. Every human being…”

Singer, Isaac Bashevis: “The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.”

Singer, Isaac Bashevis: “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer. ”

Singleton, George: “Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk to remind yourself that if you don’t write…”

Sloane, William: “A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him that fit the story or the piece of writing…”

Smiley, Jane: “Writing is only one word at a time. It’s not a whole bunch of things happening at once. Various things can present themselves…”

Smiley, Jane: “If you’re in a creative state, then essentially things sort of coagulate and you enter a state of hyper­consciousness — you can write for…”

Smiley, Jane: “You cannot be judging yourself as you write the first draft — you want to harness that unexpected energy, and you don’t want to limit…”

Smith, Anna Deavere: “The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.”

Smith, Martin Cruz: “You have to be an outsider to write…”

Smith, Zadie: “Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.”

Sneeden, Ralph: “You can tell a story in no time, but it is another matter to live one.”

Solnit, Rebecca: “Writing is facing your deepest fears and all your failures, including how hard it is to write a lot of the time…”

Solnit, Rebecca: “Write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel…”

Sondheim, Stephen: “Bit by bit, putting it together…. piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, every…”

Sones, Sonya: “Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take the work seriously, take the time to do it everyday, but don’t get all bent out of shape about…”

Sontag, Susan: “Pay attention. It’s all about taking in as much of what’s out there as you can. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It...”

Sontag, Susan: “People write me all the time, or get in touch with me about ‘What should I do if I want to be a writer? I say, ‘Well, do you really want…”

Sorkin, Aaron: “The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and…”

Sorkin, Aaron: “The difference between characters and people is the same as the difference between a photograph and a painting.”

Sorkin, Aaron: “I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, ‘You may have fooled some of the people some of the time…”

Spark, Muriel: “If you want to concentrate deeply on some piece of writing, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work…”

Sparling, Chris: “No matter what you write, good or bad, it’s an improvement to a blank page.”

Sparling, Chris: “Don’t be afraid to start. And more importantly, don’t be afraid to finish.”

Sparling, Chris: “Where there’s emotion, there’s drama. Where there’s drama, there’s tension. Where there’s tension, there’s conflict. And…”

St. Crow, Lili: “Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to...”

Stanton, Andrew: “The first draft is nothing more than a starting point, so be wrong as fast as you can.”

Stein, Sol: “Think of the novels you have loved most. Do you remember a character…”

Steinbeck, John: “A good writer always works at the impossible.”

Steinbeck, John: “You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story bad. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Steinbeck, John: “In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration… I must get my words down every day..”

Steinem, Gloria: “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something…”

Stephens, Bret: “The easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. This means every sentence has to count in grabbing their attention…”

Strayed, Cheryl: “It’s about sorrow, it’s about redemption, it’s about journey — the hero’s journey…”

Strayed, Cheryl: “Writing is hard for every last one of us… Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about…”

Strayed, Cheryl: “The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long…”

Styron, William: “If writers had to wait until their precious psyches were completely serene, there wouldn’t be…”

Swain, Uniek: “It’s not plagiarism — I’m recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer…”

Sweeney, Mike: “Too many writers confuse complex plotting with good storytelling. Drama lies in what we feel…”

Swetnam, John: “When you think you can’t come up with any more ideas, come up with another one before you move on.”

Sykes, Sam: “Characters are story. And how two people feel about each other is plot, even if they don’t have a sword fight.”

Tan, Amy: “I am never happy with any manuscript I have ever turned in. What counts for me is if I’m not mortified by what gets published. Even in the…”

Tartt, Donna: “It is just pebble by pebble by pebble. I write one sentence until I am happy with it…”

Tepper, Julian: “The one thing a writer has above all else, the reward which is bigger than anything that may come to him after huge advances…”

Thackeray, W.M.: “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he…”

Theroux, Paul: “Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? Writing is not figure skating or skiing…”

Thompson, Emma: “It’s in those hours of writing crap where you find a little thing that’s worth it, that makes you believe in the process of writing.”

Thompson, Jim: “There is only one story: nothing is as it seems…”

Thoreau, Henry David: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live…”

Tibensky, Arlaina: “Great writers play to their strengths. If you’re hilarious, let yourself be funny. If you have an ear for dialogue, keep your characters...”

Tillman, Lynne: “The whole ‘Can I call myself a writer?’ question I found so odd, as if it’s some sort of identity that is separate from the actual act...”

Tóibín, Colm: ““If you think of writing as self expression — a form of pleasure, a way of comforting yourself — I think you’re missing the point…”

Tolstoy, Leo: “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you…”

Amor Towles: “The reason that I am so interested in outlining…is that it serves what I’m trying to achieve in the novel. One of the things I’m…”

Trevor, William: “You should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else…”

Trevor, William: “The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that…”

Tuchman, Barbara W.: “Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must…”

Tully, Jim: “You will either write or you will not — and the only way to find out whether you will or not…”

Turgenev, Ivan: “I never started from ideas but always from character.”

Twain, Mark: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex…”

Twain, Mark: “Use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English…”

Tyger, Frank: “Listening to both sides of a story will convince you there is more to a story than both…”

Tyler, Anne: “If I waited until I felt like writing, I’d never write at all.”

Ueland, Brenda: “There is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent…”

Updike, John: “A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many…”

Valery, Paul: “Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing…”

Vidal, Gore: “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

Vonnegut, Kurt: “You set the story in motion, and as you’re watching this thing begins…”

Vonnegut, Kurt: “Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.”

Vonnegut, Kurt: “Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.”

Vonnegut, Kurt: “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how…”

Wallace, David Foster: “If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.”

Wallace, Randall: “There’s a Persian proverb — ‘When your heart is willing, you’ll find a thousand ways…”

Ward, Jesmyn: “Become the best writer you can because nobody owes you anything; you owe that to yourself.”

Warren, Dianne: “One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that frustration is a part of the process. I’ve rarely written anything good…”

Waters, Sarah: “Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own…”

Waters, Sarah: “Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote…”

Waters, Sarah: “Don’t overcrowd the narrative. Characters should be individualized, but functional. Each character is unique, yet each…”

Waters, Sarah: “Writing students can be great at producing a single page of well-crafted prose; what they sometimes lack is the ability to take the…”

Watts, Alan: ““Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row…”

Weesner, Ted: “Good writing is whatever you can get away with.”

Weiner, Jennifer: “Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop…”

Weiner, Jennifer: “Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale that speaks to you…”

Welles, Orson: “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

Welty, Eudora: “A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

Welty, Eudora: “Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being...”

Wendig, Chuck: “Another way to look at theme: it unifies story and bridges disparate elements.”

Wendig, Chuck: “What a character says and does is the sum of her being. It doesn’t need to be more than that: a character says shit, then does shit…”

Wendig, Chuck: “People think a creative career is about luck. A creative career is about showing up and doing the work…”

Wendig, Chuck: “The difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense.”

Wendig, Chuck: “Storytelling is an act of cruelty. We are cruel to our characters because to be kind is to invite boredom…”

Wendig, Chuck: “Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work is not good enough and must be made better… Best ask yourself: What kind of writer…”

Wendig, Chuck: “Saying ‘write what you know’ limits us from the outset — we only ‘know’ a limited number of things, after all. I know the smell of…”

Wendig, Chuck: “Plot offers the promise of Chekov and his gun, of Hitchcock and his bomb under the table. An event here leads to a choice there which…”

Wendig, Chuck: “Characters want to talk. They want to be heard. They can interrupt each other. Finish one another’s sentences. Derail...”

West, Jessamyn: “Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.”

Westheimer, David: “When you start writing, you’re 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you’ve written…”

Wetherell, W.D.: “A story isn’t about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time.”

Whedon, Joss: “If I find out I have to write today and nothing else, that’s a perfect day. I know a lot of people who…”

Whedon, Joss: “I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore…”

Whedon, Joss: “Writers are a crazy person. We create conflict — for a living. We do this all the time…”

Whedon, Joss: “Stories come from violence, they come from sex. They come from death. They come from the dark places that everyone…”

Whedon, Joss: “You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”

Whedon, Joss: “You either have to write or you shouldn’t be writing. That’s all.”

White, E.B.: “I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”

White, E.B.: “Writers care greatly how a thing is said — it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must...”

Whitman, Walt: “The secret of it all is to write in the gush, the throb,
the flood of the moment. By writing at the instant the very heartbeat…”

Whitta, Gary: “Whenever writing seems hard (all the time) remind yourself that it’s when it seems easy that you have a real problem.”

Wideman, John Edgar: “The best and worst thing about life is that you just don’t know…”

Wilder, Billy: “Writing is very hard work, and having done both writing and directing, I tell you that…”

Wilder, Billy: “It’s very difficult to do comedy because if they don’t laugh when they should laugh you are there…”

Wilder, Billy: “”People think when it comes to a screenplay you start with absolutely nothing, but the trouble is you have a million ideas. You have to…”

Willimon, Beau: “Someone asked me about the likability of my characters, and I said, verbatim: ‘Fuck likability.’”

Willis, Connie: “I think there is a tremendous amount of avoidance that goes on while writing. People used to ask me if I got writers block and…”

Wilson, August: “Confront the dark parts of yourself… your willingness to wrestle with your demons…”

Wilson, August: “Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.”

Wingfield, Jenny: “You’ve got to have characters you can identify with, and there’d better be trouble brewing somewhere…”

Winslow, Don: “Not to be preachy about it, but discipline is everything for a working writer…”

Wodehouse, P.D.: “I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.”

Wolf, Tobias: “[Writing is] like spelunking, with a light on your hat. You keep going…”

Wolf, Tobias: “You have to do everything wrong before you can really start with some authority to do it right.”

Wolfe, Tom: ““I always have a clock in front of me. Sometimes, if things are going badly, I will force myself to write a page in a half an hour.”

Woodhull-Bäche, Emme: “Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and…”

Woolf, Virginia: “Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

Yanagihara, Hanya: “The best characters are always the most frightening to write, and they are frightening to write because they are unlike you…”

Yolen, Jane: “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch…”

Yourcenar, Marguerite: “On the third or fourth draft, pencil in hand, I reread my test, by this point practically a fair copy, and eliminate...”

Zinsser, William: “Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”

Zinsser, William: The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every…”

Zinsser, William: “One maxim that my students find helpful is: One thought per sentence. Readers only process one thought at a time. So give them.”