Quotes on Writers And Writing

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

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

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

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

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

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

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

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.

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.