Quotes on Writing By Writers

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 love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

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.

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.

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.