Writers and writing Quotes · Page 2

“Hey Revision. You can be a pain but you do make Book better.”

— Buffy Andrews

“Stop calling yourself an authoress. You sound like an idiotess.”

— Oliver Markus Malloy

“I have written until I fell asleep with my computer on my lap. That can't be normal.”

— Christy Hall

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

— George Orwell

“The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas.”

— Oliver Markus

“I'm trying to give my character voice but he won't speak.”

— Buffy Andrews

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

— Philip K. Dick

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will…

— David Brin

“It’s one of those times when the question is its own answer…. The writing is itself the solution to the inability to…

— Yael Shahar

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in…

— Anne McCaffrey

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the…

— Aberjhani

“You say you have nothing to write about? How do you find things to talk about? You can write about those things…

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan…

— John Gardner

“I prefer to be on the side of losers, the misunderstood or lonely people rather than writing about the strong and powerful.”

— Núria Añó

“It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living.…

— Sherwood Anderson

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it…

— Samuel Johnson

There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever…

— Natalie

If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and…

— Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien

“I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid…

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

— William Faulkner

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

— John Steinbeck

“How do you feel when you read stuff written by dead authors? A visit by a ghost?”

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substance.

— Stanley Schmidt

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

— Matthew Arnold

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

— William Faulkner

Writing is the flip side of sex - it's good only when it's over.

— Hunter S. Thompson

“Being a writer brings out a sassy woman inside me, and I love her so.”

— Anna Bayes

“Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.”

— Jules Renard 1890

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you.

— Arthur Plotnik

“If I can write, who possibly can’t. Even drawing a line in the sand is writing”

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

— William Zinsser

Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

— Ernest Hemingway

“Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers”

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader...”

— Owen Wister

Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.

— Richard Curtis

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing…

— John Steinbeck