Writing Quotes

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it but it takes brains to build a house.

Remember that wasted minute at the start of the day? Hard luck but you'll never find it again.

It's as hard to get from almost finished to finished as to get from beginning to almost done.

It ain't a crapshoot unless you write crap.

Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours there is no life without them.

And so I just kept writing to myself.

Seeing your own name on the book cover is like hearing your book saying, "Hi. Thanks for writing me!

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation, and it seems most true when it eschews artistic devices of any sort.

Words are a puzzle put them together the right way and you get something beautiful.

The hardest things to write are often the best things to read. And the most deserving to be written.

It is strange to hear my wordsRead back to me.I don't think I wrote themTo have them ever leave the page.I think I only writeWhat happens across my brainWhen my feet are too weary To dance anymore.

J'ai un but, une tâche, disons le mot, une passion. Le métier d'écrire en est une violente et presque indestructible."[Letter to Jules Boucoiran, 4 March 1831]

...no good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one...

I kill my loneliness by reading and (then) writing, damn.

Ah, I do so love this charmingly rustic, elvin kingdom!-Baozhai

Persistence can look a lot like stupid.

It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.

The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.

Everything I've written up to this point is crap. Now I'm going to write the real one

Polysyllables obfuscate a preponderant ignorance with so much more style and panache.

Silently I dance a dance of chaos to the rhythm of a dying sun

Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.

We writers are a crazy group. I can't think of any other profession where the actual work is deep within, uncomfortable, and wanting out.

... a writer concocts a different story for every reader.

Writing is like life: it goes on.

Le livre est un morceau de silence dans les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit se tait. Celui qui lit ne rompt pas le silence.

murder your darlings

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.

Mediante la fotografía y la palabra escrita intento desesperadamente vencer la condición fugaz de mi existencia, atrapar los momentos antes de que se desvanezcan, despejar la confusión de mi pasado.

A place that proves if you get enough talented people in a room, one or two are bound to offer some helpful advice. Kind if like monkeys with typewriters.

I’ve always believed writing ads is the second most profitable form of writing. The first is ransom notes…

There is a point at which honesty becomes mischief. That's when your writing becomes irresistible.

Write until your fingers break. It may be the cure for everything.

If your business plan depends on suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a happy bunch of chuckleheads.

The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop.

From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola

Anything creative requires a bit of acting, and filling in blanks with imagination.

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

I live entire lifetimes in my head. Sometimes simultaneously.

...'being published’ is not the same as being a real writer.

If I’m writing, at least I don’t feel as paralyzed.

Most people carry their demons around with them, buried down deep inside. Writers wrestle their demons to the surface, fling them onto the page, then call them characters.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing.

Stop talking about it and just WRITE!

God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. (“Mad House”)

St. Bernard said, ‘Every word one writes smites the Devil.

People ask me all the time, "Where do your ideas come from?" So, to clear up this question...I keep my ideas inside the mind of a tiny man who is tied up in my closet!

I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business.The day you die.