• Don’t judge it. Just write it. Don’t judge it. It’s not for you to judge it. PHILIP ROTH
• You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?” WM. ZINSSER
• Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. JOAN DIDION
• Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation. ROBERT FITZGERALD
• There is no story unless you’ve written it. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
• The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader’s heart. SUSAN SONTAG
• I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect. HENRY JAMES
• They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better. JAMES FRANCO
• If you’re a writer, you want to get your soul out there, where people can look at it. JEREMY LARNER
• I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know. PATRICIA HAMPL
• Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. PATRICIA FULLER
• Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent. NEIL GAIMAN
• I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write. FRANZ KAFKA
• Don’t talk about it; write. RAY BRADBURY
• Writers take tours in other people’s lives. HARLAN ELLISON
• Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators
• "Finish what you started. You can't move forward until you finish something…"
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. ALBERT EINSTEIN
• You cannot write well without data. GEORGE V. HIGGINS
• The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. MURIEL RUKEYSER
• There’s no point in writing about somebody unless they’re flawed. AARON SORKIN
• You always get more respect when you don't have a happy ending. JULIA QUINN
• If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech. JOHN STEINBECK
• Everything stinks till it’s finished. DR. SEUSS
• Four basic premises of #writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one — or both. Usually both. SUSAN SONTAG
• One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. HENRY MILLER
• I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline. DUKE ELLINGTON
• We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories. NEIL GAIMAN
• In #writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard. RUSSELL BAKER
• You can’t be a good writer without being a good thinker. This is a depressing thought for a writer. ANDY ROONEY
• Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. ANNE LAMOTT
• The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. JANET FITCH
• Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: as much neurosis as the child can bear. W.H. AUDEN
• Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. NORA EPHRON
• There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder. BRIAN ALDISS
• You own everything that happened to you…. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better. ANNE LAMOTT
• No true artist will tolerate for one minute the world as it is. NIETZSCHE
• Aggression, the writer’s main source of energy. TED SOLOTAROFF
• Confront the dark parts of yourself. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. AUGUST WILSON
• A good metaphor can make any bad idea sound good. SCOTT ADAMS
• The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always. ARTHUR MILLER
• I don’t fret over lost time — I can always use the situations in a novel. JERZY KOSINSKI
• I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. A.R. AMMONS
• A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
• Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
• Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book. MICHAEL LEWIS
• The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you’re not in that existential panic when you don’t have a novel at all. ROSE TREMAIN
• Good writers are visible just behind their words. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. JOHN CLEESE
• Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. AMY HEMPEL
• There is only one plot — things are not what they seem. JIM THOMPSON
• The first 8 drafts are terrible. MALCOLM GLADWELL
• One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me? ALAIN DE BOTTON
• Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze. JACQUES BARZUN
• I rhyme…to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. SEAMUS HEANEY
• I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness. WILLIAM SAROYAN
• I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing. ALICE WALKER
• Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck. KIM ADDONIZIO
• Write to your fear. DOROTHY ALLISON
• Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure. NATALIE GOLDBERG
• Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in. ANNE LAMOTT
• I never feel that it's finished, but you have to stop somewhere. ANNIE PROULX
• Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. FLANNERY O’CONNOR
• Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal. J. CARVER
• If I come up against a brick wall, I'll just go and play snooker or something or sleep on it, and my subconscious will fix it. MARTIN AMIS
• "No, no, no. You don't have 'Writer's Block.' You're bored with what you're writing right now…”
• Finish everything you start. COLM TÓIBÍN
• Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves. LEWIS CARROLL
• The best technique is none at all. HENRY MILLER
• "Writing is a practice, like meditation or prayer…”
• Be obscure clearly. E.B. WHITE
• Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason. WILLIAM STRUNK
• "A true writer opens people's ears and eyes, not merely playing to the public…”
• Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive. GORDON LISH
• Beware of advice — even this. CARL SANDBURG
• Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly. JORGE LUIS BORGES
• Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time. HOWARD NEMEROV
• The discipline of the writer is to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him. RACHEL CARSON
• Don’t write it right, just write it—and then make it right later. TARA MOSS
• "Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover…”
• "Spend a lot of time alone so you can think up some original thoughts of your own…”
• Tell a story! Don’t try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first. ANNE McCAFFREY
• If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all. ANNE TYLER
• A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. SAKI
• Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards. HENRY MILLER
• In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same. ARISTOTLE
• Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal. J. CARVER
• Be obscure clearly. E.B. WHITE
• Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason. WILLIAM STRUNK, JR.
• Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive. GORDON LISH
• All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story. ISAK DINESEN
• I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it’s too discouraging. GORE VIDAL
• Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. T.S. ELIOT
• I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all. E. B. WHITE
• The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire. BILLY WILDER
• He who writes carelessly confesses…that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
• My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast. MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
• Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story. ETHAN CANIN
• Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right. AMY JOY
• Tell the truth and not the facts. MAYA ANGELOU
• Something that you feel will find its own form. JACK KEROUAC
• Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. JULIA CAMERON
• You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death. WILLIAM GOLDMAN
• The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page. ANN PATCHETT
• Adverbs are guilty until proven innocent. HOWARD OGDEN
• Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. MARK TWAIN
• Writing a play is like writing a poem—it matters where the line breaks happen. TONY KUSHNER
• Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. NEIL GAIMAN
• The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. JOYCE CAROL OATES
• Whether or not you write well, write bravely. BILL STOUT
• I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
• Tell a story! Don’t try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first. ANNE McCAFFREY
• You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things. NEIL GAIMAN
• You write about the thing that sank its teeth into you and wouldn't let go. PAUL WEST
• I write to make sense of my life. JOHN CHEEVER
• A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• Writing is like a sport, it’s like athletics. If you don’t practice, you don’t get any better. RICK RIORDAN
• Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly. WITTGENSTEIN
• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. LEONARDO DA VINCI
• Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones. GEORGE ORWELL
• Sometimes I know what I believe because of what I’ve written. J.K. ROWLING
• The less conscious one is of being “a writer,” the better the writing. PICO IYER
• The solitude of writing is quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch. NADINE GORDIMER
• One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other. CHARLES SIMIC
• A writer is always going to betray somebody. If you’re going to be honest with your subject, you can’t be genteel. TED MORGAN
• Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. MARK TWAIN
• Writing a play is like writing a poem—it matters where the line breaks happen. TONY KUSHNER
• Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.” ELMORE LEONARD
• Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS

• Basically, fiction is people. You can’t write fiction about ideas. THEODORE STURGEON
• Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world. ANN PATCHETT
• There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets. DIANE DUANE
• Beware the modish message. Ask yourself if the symbol you have detected is not your own footprint. VLADIMIR NABOKOV
• An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
• Writing is putting one’s obsessions in order. JEAN GRENIER
• Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. ELMORE LEONARD
• You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed. KURT VONNEGUT
• If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all. ANNE TYLER
• You don’t find time to write. You make time. It’s my job. NORA ROBERTS
• I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. DOUGLAS ADAMS
• Lying is the beginning of fiction JAMAICA KINCAID
• What I don't write is as important as what I write. JAMAICA KINCAID
• I’ve never written the things I’d like to write that I’ve admired all my life. Maybe one never does. ELIZABETH BISHOP
• If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. ORSON WELLES
• Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about. THOMAS McGUANE
• Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. BONNIE FRIEDMAN
• Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after another novelist. We choose it. PAUL AUSTER
• Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what. JULIA CAMERON
• If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer. R.A. SALVATORE
• We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. STEVEN PRESSFIELD
• No art ever came out of not risking your neck. EUDORA WELTY
• Start writing by thinking, not wrestling with words. JONATHAN PRICE
• We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes. FRANZ KAFKA
• Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create. LILLIAN HELLMAN
• Readers don't care how long it took you to write it. HOWARD OGDEN
• Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious. P.D. JAMES
• Write till your fingers bleed. CHUCK WENDIG
• Behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’s soul. OSCAR WILDE
• Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. RAY BRADBURY
• I don’t like questions of explication. What did I mean by this or that? I want the books to speak for themselves. BERNARD MALAMUD
• I choose to write about people whose values I respect; my pleasure is to bear witness to their lives. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. SIMONE WEIL
• It is not wise to violate the rules unless you know how to observe them. T.S. ELIOT
• Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft. JOHN CIARDI
• You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough. HARUKI MURAKAMI
• No one can take writing away from you, but no one can give it to you, either. MEG WOLITZER
• I rhyme…to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. SEAMUS HEANEY
• If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it will bore the actors, and will, then, bore the audience. DAVID MAMET
• Don't be clever, be clear. HOWARD OGDEN
• Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard. DAVID McCULLOUGH
• Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. CAROL BURNETT
• Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. NATALIE GOLDBERG
• Where do I get my ideas from? I make them up. Out of my head. NEIL GAIMAN
• There is only one plot – things are not what they seem. JIM THOMPSON
• I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself. FRAN LEBOWITZ
• Originality is undetected plagiarism. WILLIAM INGE
• Writers are too self-centered to be lonely. RICHARD CONDON
• Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. JANET FITCH
• I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it. DAVID RABE
• In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul. ALBERT CAMUS
• Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. JOHN IRVING
• Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell. P.D. JAMES
• What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written. JACQUES DERRIDA
• It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in #poetry and #fiction, but the flesh made word. WILLIAM H. GASS
• A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away. DORIS LESSING
• There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It’s a kind of trick of mind and he is born with it. MORLEY CALLAGHAN
• If you’re going to write, you have to have something to write about. The gods were good. They kept me on the street. CHARLES BUKOWSKI
• Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. LOUIS L'AMOUR
• Stories don't end. ROBERT ALTMAN
• If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads. SHERMAN ALEXIE
• You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write. SAUL BELLOW
• Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care. NORMAN COUSINS
• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. CYRIL CONNOLLY
• All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. RALPH WALDO EMERSON
• Writers get paid for what other people get scolded for: daydreaming. We’re supposed to wander. RICHARD WALTER
• Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. BERNARD MALAMUD
• In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same. ARISTOTLE
• I could not think without writing. JEAN PIAGET
• The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone. MARTIN AMIS
• Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence. ALICE WALKER
• It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written. ROBERT HASS
• Only bad writers think that their work is really good. ANNE ENRIGHT
• You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say. TRUMAN CAPOTE
• You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road. RICHARD PRICE
• A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. WILLIAM FAULKNER
• All morning I worked on the proof of one of my poems, and I took out a comma; in the afternoon I put it back. OSCAR WILDE
• If there is a special hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. JOHN DOS PASSOS
• Strggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind. JACK KEROUAC
• Tell the truth and not the facts. MAYA ANGELOU
• Art is either plagiarism or revolution. PAUL GAUGUIN
• Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found. ELIZABETH BOWEN
• You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?” WM ZINSSER
• Storytelling alters the storyteller. And a story is altered by being told. MOHSIN HAMID
• Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one. JOHN STEINBECK
• Writing is easy: just stare at the screen of your computer until a tear drops on your keyboard. PAULO COELHO
• Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better. ANNE LAMOTT
• “Look, don't just stare at the pages,” I used to tell my students. “Become the characters. Live inside the book.” WALLY LAMB
• In your reading, find books to improve your color sense, your sense of shape and size in the world. RAY BRADBURY
• Facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough. PAUL SIMON
• What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life. TED HUGHES
• Pick a better verb. JANET FITCH
• I need, therefore I imagine. CARLOS FUENTES
• Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short. ADAM HOCHSCHILD
• You've got to be smart enough to write and stupid enough not to think about all the things that might go wrong. SARAH GILBERT
• Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.” C.S. LEWIS
• You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. H.L. MENCKEN
  • Even when I’m stretched out in my coffin they may find me tinkering with some poem. CHARLES SIMIC
• I write to understand as much as to be understood. ELIE WIESEL
• A line of dialogue is not clear enough if you need to explain how it's said. ELMORE LEONARD
  • What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
  • Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: as much neurosis as the child can bear. W.H. AUDEN
  • Life is chaos. It has none of the symmetries and patterning of the novel. MARTIN AMIS
  • The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence. JOYCE CAROL OATES
• I choose to write about people whose values I respect; my pleasure is to bear witness to their lives. WILLIAM ZINSSER
  • Inspect your “hads” and see if you really need them. MARTIN AMIS
• You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it. ADRIENNE RICH
• Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel. HARPER LEE
  • When one’s not writing poems...you wonder how you ever did it. It’s like another country you can’t reach. MAY SARTON
• If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
  • Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write. ELIE WIESEL
  • Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the “poetess.” AMBROSE BIERCE
• It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones. RAY BRADBURY
  • There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
  • Usually I begin a poem with an image or phrase; if you follow trustfully, it’s surprising how far an image can lead. JAMES MERRILL
• When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. KURT VONNEGUT
  • Only bad writers think that their work is really good. ANNE ENRIGHT
  • I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank page. NORA ROBERTS
• A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk. HELEN DUNMORE
• The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind. JOHN GREGORY DUNNE
• A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. RICHARD BACH
• Don’t write it right, just write it—and then make it right later. TARA MOSS
• I believe that you either love the work or the rewards. Life is a lot easier if you love the work. JANE SMILEY
• If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. THOMAS MANN
• Whatever you write should lead to a higher level of understanding. If you've already got it figured out, it's a waste of time. T. McMILLAN
• Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. ARTHUR FREED
  • Write hard and clear about what hurts. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
  • As a writer, I’m trying to pay attention to the stuff the people aren’t paying attention to. JONATHAN FRANZEN
• Composition, in crystallizing memory, displaces it. JOHN UPDIKE
  • The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes. AGATHA CHRISTIE
  • Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. RAY BRADBURY
• I have been a storyteller since the beginning of my life, rearranging facts in order to make them more significant. JOHN CHEEVER
• Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
• One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions. SALMAN RUSHDIE
  • You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death. WILLIAM GOLDMAN
• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good. WILLIAM FAULKNER
• If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. NATALIE GOLDBERG
  • Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan? ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
  • A writer is always going to betray somebody. If you’re going to be honest with your subject, you can’t be genteel. TED MORGAN
• A playwright loves all his characters, including his mass murderers. STEPHEN SONDHEIM
• 16 Pieces Of Indispensable Writing Advice In Magic Marker
• Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count. DR. SEUSS
• You can’t be a good writer without being a good thinker. This is a depressing thought for a writer. ANDY ROONEY
• In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard. RUSSELL BAKER
• Once you’ve got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three—throw them away and look for others. BERNARD MALAMUD
  • Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
• If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed. DAVID VISCOTT
• Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prodding with a purpose. ZORA NEALE HURSTON
• Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
• If you’re going to write, you have to have something to write about. The gods were good. They kept me on the street. CHARLES BUKOWSKI
• A cup of coffee. Always black, always strong, and always just one. It takes the cork out of the bottle. VIRGINIA HAMILTON ADAIR
• "I've learned to trust the chaos…”
  • If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that. URSULA K. LeGUIN
  • I don’t want it to sound like I’m writing, I want it to be like I’m talking to you. JENNY WINGFIELD
• Write about the emotions you fear the most. LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON
• Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
  • I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. MANUEL PUIG
  • When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom. STEPHEN KING
• I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them. E.L. DOCTOROW
• Dare to tell the smallest of stories If you want to generate large emotions. WILLIAM ZINSSER
• People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently. ANNA QUINDLEN
• I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right. MARTIN AMIS
  • I never try to write a line when I’m not strictly on the wagon. EUGENE O’NEILL
  • The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. ELMORE LEONARD
• I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. MURAKAMI
  • Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. JOHN CLEESE
• "The teacher who made me get up in front of the class and read was a big influence…” ´
• My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry. NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
• An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms. J.D. SALINGER
• Whether or not you write well, write bravely. BILL STOUT
  • The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. FLANNERY O’CONNOR
• The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then the queen died of grief is a plot. E.M. FORSTER
• If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals. DON ROFF
  • When I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry. NICHOLSON BAKER
• Literature…is the union of suffering with the instinct for form. THOMAS MANN
• I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness. WILLIAM SAROYAN
• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
  • The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. AUGUST WILSON
• Don’t get it right, just get it written. JAMES THURBER
  • Close the door. BARBARA KINGSOLVER
• By giving a character something to hide — a secret — we create the illusion of depth: interior and exterior, seen and unseen. DAVID CORBETT
• Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. FLANNERY O’CONNOR
• Letters, the writing writers are writing when they should be writing. LORRIE MOORE
• We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
• I have no talent; it’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time. GRAHAM GREENE
  • Write books only if you say in them things you would not dare confide to anyone. E.M. CIORAN
  • An artist is always alone — if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. HENRY MILLER
• Prose is like hair; it shines with combing. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
  • I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
• Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers. GEORGE ORWELL
• I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. J.K. ROWLING
  • Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ANTON CHEKHOV
• "I was born a storyteller and by the time I was four I think my parents were ready to duct-tape my mouth…”
• Breslin’s Rule: Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover. JIMMY BRESLIN
• Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: write to please yourself. HARLAN ELLISON
• Every writer’s assumption is that he is as other human beings are, and that they are more or less as he is. SAUL BELLOW
• “Fumblerules of Grammar”:
  • Don't use no double negatives.
  • Eschew obfuscation.
  • Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
  • The passive voice should never be employed.
  • You should not use a big word when a diminutive would suffice.
  • It is bad to carelessly split infinitives.
  • About those sentence fragments.
  • Avoid clichés like the plague.
• • Any time I talk in public about #writing, I end up not able to do any writing. ANN TYLER