Quotes on Great Writing

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

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.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

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

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

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.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

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

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.