Writers and writing Quotes · Page 2

“Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.”

— Roman Payne

“Writing is a bitch. It's an itch that I love to scratch.”

— Ana Claudia Antunes

The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

— George Orwell

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

— Gene Fowler

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

— Pete Hamill

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

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

— Owen Wister

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean…

— Larry Niven

“You can edit what you write. Why not edit what you say? If it hurts somebody, you can still offer an apology…

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

“One author said "I write because I want to live a footprint in the sands of history.” It's hard to live a…

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not…

— Alice Munro

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Núria Añó

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

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

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

— Samuel Johnson

“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

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

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

— Richard Curtis

“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

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

— Hunter S. Thompson

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

— Bangambiki Habyarimana

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

— Ernest Hemingway

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

— William Zinsser

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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

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

— William Faulkner

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

— Stanley Schmidt

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

— 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

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