Quotes from Famous Writers
Every writer who's ever sat down and put pen to paper, has had something to say about the highs and lows of the writing process. Why not choose your favourite and write it out, and pin it up where you can see it while you're writing?
The first draft of everything is shit. - Ernest Hemingway
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favour you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. - Dorothy Parker
Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. - Mark Twain
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. - Harper Lee
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. - George Orwell
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - W. Somerset Maugham
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time, or the tools, to write. Simple as that. - Stephen King
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. - Neil Gaiman
If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. - William Zinsser
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. - Kurt Vonnegut
Write drunk, edit sober. - Ernest Hemingway
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. - Mark Twain
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that, but you are the only you. - Neil Gaiman
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. - Ray Bradbury
Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. - Isabel Allende
This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard. - Neil Gaiman
If you’re using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech. - John Steinbeck
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. - Elmore Leonard
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you. - Zadie Smith
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. - Will Self
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. - Ernest Hemingway
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. - Henry Miller
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. - Anton Checkhov
Never use a long word where a short one will do. - George Orwell
Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed. - Ray Bradbury
Every sentence must do one of two things, reveal character or advance the action. - Kurt Vonnegut
Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window. - William Faulkner
You can fix anything but a blank page. - Nora Roberts
You have to get to a very quiet place inside yourself. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t have noise outside. I know some people who put jazz on, loudly, to write. I think each writer has her or his secret path to the muse. - Maya Angelou
When you’re stuck, and sure you’ve written absolute garbage, force yourself to finish and THEN decide to fix or scrap it, or you will never know if you can. - Jodi Picoult
I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. - Erica Jong
I always write in the morning. I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau, too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. In the morning one’s head is particularly fresh.
The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking while still in bed or during the walk. - Leo Tolstoy
At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether
or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night. - HP Lovecraft
Always stop while you are going good and don’t worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry bout it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. - Ernest Hemingway
I try to leave out the parts that people skip. - Elmore Leonard
Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your
darlings. - Stephen King
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. - Ezra Pound
I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they “don’t have time to read.” This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn’t have time to buy any rope or pitons. - Stephen King
You either have to write or you shouldn’t be writing. That’s all. - Joss Whedon
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad, including your own bad. - Doris Lessing
On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck. - Anne Rice
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. - Anais Nin
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. - Toni Morrison
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write. - Saul Bellow
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. - Robert Frost
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. - Franz Kafka
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. - Isaac
Asimov
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. - John Steinbeck
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. - Elmore Leonard
Words are a lens to focus one's mind. - Ayn Rand
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. - Gustave Flaubert
A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God. - Sidney Sheldon
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. - Stephen King
It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. - Ernest Hemingway
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you writ. - Somerset Maugham
First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him! - Ray Bradbury
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. - William Faulkner
No-one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronising. - E.B. White
All the information you need can be given in dialogue. - Elmore Leonard
If you write one story, it may be bad, but if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favour. - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. - Terry Pratchett
You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. - Jodi Picoult
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. - Louis L’Amour
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. - Maya Angelou
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. - Richard Bach
Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic. - J. K. Rowling
The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday. - David Schlosser
Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration. - Ralph Keyes
I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn’t, I would die. - Isaac Asimov
If it’s still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk. - Paulo Coelho
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy. - Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. - Samuel Johnson
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. - Barbara Kingsolver
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. - Annie Proulx
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. - Stephen King
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. - George Orwell
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. - William S. Burroughs
Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed. - J.K. Rowling
It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style. - P.D. James
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. - Virginia Woolf
Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins. - Neil Gaiman
I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on until I am. - Jane Austen
I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them — without a thought about publication — and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside. - Anne Tyler
I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself, click, back into that world. - Stephen King
Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. - Margaret Chittenden
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. - Gloria Steinem
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. - Stephen King
The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter. - Neil Gaiman
My aim in constructing sentences is to make the sentence utterly easy to understand, writing what I call transparent prose. I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant. - Ken Follett
I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long. - Louise Brown