Writing Quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Character is plot, plot is character.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

A writer wastes nothing.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nothing any good isn't hard.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I doubt if, after all, I’ll ever write anything again worth putting in print.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Poetry is dying first. It'll be absorbed into prose sooner or later.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I could never be a Communist. I could never be regimented. I could never be told what to write.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“To Scottie July 1937 I honestly believed with no effort on my part [10 years earlier at 30 on his first trip…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A writer must find his own grain, way, bent. ...He aspires to create new and original works. His way is alone. If…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“To Scottie July 18, 1940 p.454 The prose talent depends on other factors- assimilation of material and careful selection of it, or…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

The only way to increase it is to cultivate your own garden. And the only thing that will help you is poetry,…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Progress was a labyrinth ... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it ... the…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I was haunted always by my other life-my drab room in the Bronx, my square foot of the subway, my fixation upon…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“To Frances Turnbull Nov. 9, 1938 p. 368 I've read the story carefully and, Frances, I'm afraid the price for doing professional…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones. ”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald