207 Salient Quotes About Writing

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

The joy that isn't shared dies young.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

Words create worlds.

I write not because I want to but because I am destined to.

Writing starts with living.

My most important advice to writers is butt in chair!

An aspiring writer should write one time and edit ten times.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.

There is no perfect time to write. There's only now.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Get into the scene late, get out of the scene early.

Writing well is the best revenge.

The best writing is rewriting.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

Writers who don't write weekly, write weakly.

Writing makes you more human.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

About clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.

Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.

My pen beats faster as I write with my heart.

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Content, in writing, is supreme.

Tell a story in fewer and simpler words.

Each book starts from ashes.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

Good writing is rewriting.

Writing is the supreme solace.

Hard writing makes easy reading.

Read, read read. Read everything.

Writing is exposing yourself to strangers.

Writing is the hardest physical work there is.

The core of my writing is not art but truth.

When the lyrical muse sings the creative pen dances.

Just keep the stylus moving.

Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Good writing is always new.

Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.

Writing is a lonely profession.

The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.

Good writing is everything.

So what? All writers are lunatics!

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Writing is a delicious agony.

A lot of writing is thinking.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I write to be the characters that I am not.

When in doubt, blow something up.

Writing is the process of asking the next logical question.

Be unpredictable, Be Real, Be Interesting. Tell a good story.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

Writing is inherently scary.

Writing is a conviction before it is a craft.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.

Writing is a form of licensed madness.

Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

Writing is hard, hard work; that's just the way it is.

Writing is my salvation. If I didn't write, what would I do?

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

Best advice on writing I've ever received. Finish.

Writing is the beast unto itself.

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

What writing does is to reveal.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

All good writing comes out of aloneness.

Writing is a lonely business.

Writing is an antidote for loneliness.

Writing is a struggle no matter what the genre.

Writing is a communication.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise.

Getting even is one reason for writing.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

Writing. Love is writing.

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.

Endings are the embryos of new beginnings.

Sometimes we have to break down to break through.

Writing heals my heart like no pill ever could.

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Conflict. Conflict. Where art thou conflict?

Modernity of form is the style of old fogies yet to be.

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.

If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing.

Write while the heat is in you.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Write drunk; edit sober.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

You can make anything by writing.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in, the chances are very high that you will interest other people as well.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

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.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Your word is the power that you have to create; it is a gift.

Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

Poetry is an act of peace.

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.

Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.

Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.

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.

You wanna fly, you got to give up the sh*t that weighs you down.

To survive, you must tell stories.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Tears are words that need to be written.

Writing is the painting of the voice.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.

You go where the story leads you.

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

All bad writers are in love with the epic.

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Writing is its own reward.

Good fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Write what should not be forgotten.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.

Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

I don't control my writing -- it controls me.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

A word after a word after a word is power.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.