Writing Quotes · Page 477

I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down.

— Nora Roberts

I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.

— Billy Collins

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.

— George Plimpton

I've been writing stories since I was 12. 'Writer's Digest' was one of my writing teachers, actually.

— Laurell K. Hamilton

I've always felt those articles somehow reveal more about the writers than they do about me.

— Marilyn Monroe

I really love standup, and I really love writing standup.

— James Acaster

I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.

— Salman Rushdie

the finest achievements are those of the pen. ... To me God the Father is a writer.

— Leslie Caron

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we…

— Jane Yolen

Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over…

— Marti Noxon

I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with…

— Charles Lamb

I really write emotionally so whatever mood I'm in, or if a chord hits me a certain way that's what I'll go…

— Zac Farro

Writers dream of sentences that sail through the waters of thought. We try to control their shape and size, and we struggle…

— Constance Hale

All newspaper writers have heard that the stuff they compose today has an excellent chance of being used to wrap tomorrow's mackerel.

— Ira Berkow

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll…

— Maya Angelou

I've been working on my autobiography, just pecking away in longhand. The more you write, the more you remember. The more you…

— Pat Morita

So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out…

— Stephen King

The media has outright lied on me. They reported that I called myself Osama's [Bin Laden] 'sex slave,' apparently unaware that sex…

— Kola Boof

“When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company…

— John Crowley

History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of…

— Jill Lepore

If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions…

— Jane Smiley

“Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean/ they…

— Anne Lamott

I love writing. I'm not particularly comfortable in the actual world - I'm much more comfortable on the page. So if I…

— Aaron Sorkin

I figured out I wanted to tell stories in college. I'm an only child who moved around a lot growing up, and…

— Joe Robert Cole

Yeah, I think good writers have a lot of discipline and I don't have that in me.

— Alex G

Anything can be said and, in consequence, written about anything.

— George Steiner

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

— Elizabeth Bowen

In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing.

— David B. Coe

“We are the indelible words we write and our stories are open wide spreading like the song we are”

— Naledi Molebatsi

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song.

— Joni Mitchell

“But I am a writer, and I deal in words, and I need to have them spelled out for me--precisely.”

— Sydney Jane Baily

the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

— Brenda Ueland

When I first started to write poetry, I used to feel as if my tongue would go numb.

— Kim Hyesoon

“Writer's block is when your imaginary friends won't talk to you.”

— Mary Papas

I've always been a writer. I hope to continue to write books until I can't anymore.

— Megan McCafferty

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

— Kurt Vonnegut

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

— Henry David Thoreau

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

— Catherynne M. Valente

“The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue!”

— Richard Greenberg

“The good writers touch life. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.”

— Ray Bradbury