Writing Quotes · Page 409

Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

— Eugene Ionesco

Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes.

— Harlan Coben

Your only responsibility as a writer is to be true to the story that has chosen you as its writer.

— Jean Little

“Most journalists are impatient to get their legwork done and to start the actual writing”

— David Halberstam

You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

— Antonia Fraser

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.

— Wietse Venema

I find that writing unit tests actually increases my programming speed

— Martin Fowler

If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the…

— Virginia Woolf

I watch some kids ask the cafeteria ladies to sign their books. What do they write: "Hope your chicken patties never bleed?"…

— Laurie Halse Anderson

All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy,…

— Jodi Picoult

While I'm writing YA, I can't read YA, and the same with adult. I usually only listen to music while I'm writing…

— Jennifer Armentrout

“John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should he more widely read.”

— Saul Bellow

Politics and writing were, I think, the two things that had the most appeal for me. That probably pushed me more toward…

— Clay Travis

I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.

— Jacqueline Susann

The condition of the world today is such that most writers feel they cannot truthfully be "comic" about it.

— Dylan Thomas

We also had a beautiful feature where the writer used the story of two mentally ill relatives, one of whom killed his…

— Clara Jeffery

Hoping they'd been inspired by the examples of Anne Frank and other teens who had turned negative experiences into something positive by…

— Erin Gruwell

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're…

— Don DeLillo

“The anti-Stratfordians hold that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays—it was another fellow of the same name, or of a different name. In…

— David Mamet

“People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as…

— Angela Carter

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel,…

— Joan Didion

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would…

— Stephen King

The true art is being able to take whatever the writer's done, and if it is a bit flimsy or it is…

— Billy Howle

May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock!

— Anonymous

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.

— Glen Keane

I can't write - I can't think like a woman... it's not natural, but I've tried.

— John Grisham

I play in a band, I write songs, I sing, you know, perform on stage.

— Adam Levine

There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write history.

— Paul Watson

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: writing picture books is an art - the art of word choice.

— Rebecca Serle

I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer

— Leon Uris

When you write in the third person, you get to imagine other people's interiority.

— Emily Gould

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

— James A. Michener

There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.

— Jarvis Cocker

I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.

— Lauren Groff

Readers are what it's all about, aren't they? If not, why am I writing?

— Anonymous

“I tried to think outside the box but couldn't open the lid.”

— Alan Dapre

“Writing romantic fiction is the second chance that loved ones denied us.”

— Shannon Alder

I've learned to allow myself the room to fall in love with what I'm writing.

— Sylvia Day

I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.

— Jonathan Lethem