Writing-craft Quotes

“Words sing and dance too!”

— Avijeet Das

“Writing is a team sport.”

— Chris White

“Good fiction makes the truth believable.”

— Tarrant Smith

“Good writing just isn't that common.”

— Eric Flint

“Don't be afraid of what you're creating.”

— Christy Hall

“Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.”

— Amy Joy

“Find the problem, find the story.”

— John Brown

“We're not mad. We're inhabited”

— Sue Moorcroft

“Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.”

— C. Kennedy

“Let your characters lead when you're dancing together.”

— Caron Kamps Widden

“You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.”

— Diego Ramos

“If you're a writer, write. And always strive for excellence.”

— Linda Yezak

“I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do.”

— Rayne Hall

“This whole show vs tell concept both bewilders and challenges my mind.”

— Davee Jones

“Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.”

— Jennifer Hudson Taylor

“The hard part is putting one word after another.”

— Jo Linsdell

“Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling,…

— Robert Galbraith

“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more." ( "The Castle" )”

— Michael Connelly

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

— Oliver Markus

“As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready…

— William H. Gass

“How many great gems were lost to thought and not put down to pen. You can but think of just a few…

— L.F. Young

“You could say, in a way, that I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps I might be called a recorder? ... I…

— Etienne de L'Amour

“My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vivdness far beyond the…

— Mary Shelley

“A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite…

— Roman Payne

“...I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters…

— Glen Hirshberg

“[G]reat stories communicate simple truths that reflect the poetic dimensions of the human soul. Not only do powerful characters help us understand…

— Kate Wright

“A good part of the physical attraction [between the hero and heroine of a romance novel] comes to life during these exchanges…

— Julie Tetel Andresen

“It seems to me that you might create any sort of character in a novel and there would be at least one…

— Sōseki Natsume

“I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and…

— Pat Conroy

“There’s a difference between the ‘art’ of writing and the ‘craft’ of writing. Art is subjective, its beauty lies in the eyes…

— Gerard de Marigny

“Coffee, my delight of the morning; yoga, my delight of the noon. Then before nightfall, I run along the pleasant paths of…

— Roman Payne

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover…

— Red Haircrow

“All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. .…

— Anne Lamott

“In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to…

— Anton Chekhov

“You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops…

— Adair Lara

“Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was…

— John Irving

“Bye-bye. Nice knowing you. But if you are waiting for that perfect idea to strike like lightning during a dust storm (I…

— Darynda Jones

“I write to find strength. I write to become the person that hides inside me. I write to light the way through…

— Shannon L. Alder

“Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and…

— David Morrell

“Children are capable, of course, of literary belief , when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of…

— J.R.R. Tolkien