Quotes on Writers And Writing

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.