Writing Quotes

I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know) Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

No tears and the writer no tears and the reader.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

Writers aren't exactly people they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of care themselves.

The writer must write what he has to say not speak it.

The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose not his individuality but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

I quote others in order to better express my own self.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say and then to say it with the utmost levity.

Every great and original writer in proportion as he is great and original must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Read over your compositions and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.

The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book I assure you.

There is but one art to omit.

When an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

We like that a sentence should read as if its author had he held a plough instead of a pen could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - well that's memoirs.

His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention out of his experience should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.

Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

As for style of writing if one has anything to say it drops from him simply and directly as a stone falls to the ground.

I've put my genius into my life I've only put my talent into my works.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better a little better.

Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I'll probably... drop writing children's books and become a political cartoonist again.

A big reason why I started writing is I felt that fiction had stopped evolving. All other entertainments were getting better, constantly, as technology allowed. Movies. Video games. Music.

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

I am what I have ever read

Words disappear in the air, but writing remains. If you want something to be remembered about you, write it down

Writing is self-pleasure

The world would have been a better place if some men had just shut their mouths.

We write, not because we claim to know more than others, but perhaps because we want to know more than others. Writers are explorers

A writer is never alone, he is always with himself

You say you have nothing to write about? How do you find things to talk about? You can write about those things you like to talk about, that's your area of expertise

. If you want to write, just write anything that comes into your mind. You will be surprised at how you can force inspiration to stand on your side.

You can edit what you write. Why not edit what you say? If it hurts somebody, you can still offer an apology or withdraw your statements

Able writers let us into their minds and show us how they think and by that open our minds to ourselves

If you are afraid of the critics you will never write a word

You never know what you will write until you write it

Write it as you see in your own perspective, you may be right or wrong but then what, that's how you see it

How do you feel when you read stuff written by dead authors? A visit by a ghost?

You cannot write if you are not angry