Quotes on Writers And Writing

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

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.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

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.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

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

As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

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.

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

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.