On Writing
I am a big fan of inspirational quotes. Here are hundreds of them I’ve collected over the years: Writers on writing.
I am a big fan of inspirational quotes. Here are hundreds of them I’ve collected over the years: Writers on writing.
Aaron, Jason: “If you want to be a writer, then just be a writer. Be one every day, all day.”
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…”
Adams, Scott: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
Aiken, Howard: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea…”
Aiken, Joan: “Why do we want to have alternate worlds…”
Allende, Isabel: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”
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…”
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, Mary: “The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Barnes, Julian: “Creation of character is, like much of fiction writing, a mixture of subjective feel and objective…”
Barthelme, Donald: “Writing is a process of not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. The not-knowing is crucial to art…”
Baxter, Charles: “To be a novelist or a short story writer, you first have to pretend…”
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…”
Berger, Thomas: “Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.”
Bernays, Anne: “No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep.”
Block, Lawrence: ““One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly…”
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…”
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.”
Breslin, Jimmy: “Anything that isn’t writing is easy.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
Close, Del: “No scene is ever about the words being spoken.”
Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle: “Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head…”
Collins, Billy: “I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.”
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.”
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: “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…”
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!”
Decens, Emily Logan: “I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas…”
Dexter, Colin: “I think you’ve got to be prepared to write a load of nonsense to start with…”
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…”
Doctorow, E.L.: “Writing is like driving at night through the fog. You can only see…”
Dougherty, Joseph: “Writing is easy. Being a writer is murder.”
Dubus, Andrew: “Some of my characters now feel more grateful about simple things…”
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…”
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.”
Edison, Thomas: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work…”
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.”
Ephron, Nora: “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
Flaubert, Gustave: “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and…”
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…”
Fowler, Gene: “Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Gelbart, Larry: “One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.”
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.”
Ginsberg, Allen: “To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint…”
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.”
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…”
Guare, John: “I loved Feydeau’s one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as…”
Gunn, James: “I don’t believe in writers’ block. I think that’s just writers judging themselves. Allow yourself to write shit!”
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.”
Harrison, Jim: “Being a writer requires an intoxication with language…”
Hartley, L. P.: “It’s better to write about things you feel than things you know about.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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….”
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…”
Hornby, Nick: “Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down…”
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…”
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, Washington: “There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse…”
Iyer, Pico: “Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to…”
James, Henry: “What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?”
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…”
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…”
Kasdan, Larry: “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
King, Larry L.: “Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”
King, Stephen: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs…”
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.”
Kingsolver, Barbara: “Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say…”
Koppelman, Brian: “Everyday, it’s about building a practice that enables you to try and forget that you’re afraid.”
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…”
Kushner, Tony: “All I really know about writing is that if you’re a writer, writing is what you do…”
LaGravenese, Richard: “Is this a story I want to tell? Is this a world I want to be in? There’s got to be…”
Lambuth, David: “The fewer the words used, the more concentrated the attention; and the greater…”
Lamott, Annie: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people…”
Lamott, Annie: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start…”
L’Amour, Louis: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
L’Engle, Madeleine: “Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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, Steve: “I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but…”
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…”
McCarthy, Cormac: “I never had doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Mitchell, David: “Get the structure wrong and you blow up shortly after take off.”
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.”
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, Van: “There are not many roads. There is only one road, infinitely connected…”
Moyers, Bill: “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
Murray, Donald M.: “Don’t market yourself. Editors and readers don’t know what they want until they…”
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.”
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’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.”
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…”
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…”
Pauling, Linus: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
Pratchett, Terry: “There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Robbins, Tom: “Write every day without fail… even if you are savagely hung over and your grandmother has just fallen out…”
Robert, Nora: “You can fix anything but a blank page.”
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.”
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.”
Russell, David O.: “I have billions of ideas. The problem is making them as good as they can be…”
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…”
Saks, Soll: “You have to be brave to take out that white sheet of paper and put on it words that could…”
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.”
Scalzi, John: “Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different.”
Schulman, Tom: “If you think writers create from nothing or that writing is a lonely occupation…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
Steinem, Gloria: “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something…”
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…”
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.”
Tartt, Donna: “It is just pebble by pebble by pebble. I write one sentence until I am happy with it…”
Thackeray, W.M.: “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he…”
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…”
Tolstoy, Leo: “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
Wendig, Chuck: “Another way to look at theme: it unifies story and bridges disparate elements.”
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.”
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.”
White, E.B.: “I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
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…”
Willimon, Beau: “Someone asked me about the likability of my characters, and I said, verbatim: ‘Fuck likability.’”
Wilson, August: “Confront the dark parts of yourself… your willingness to wrestle with your demons…”
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…”
Woodhull-Bäche, Emme: “Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and…”
Yolen, Jane: “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch…”
Zinsell, William: “Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”