Quotes from Famous Writers

Happy Memorial Day to everyone in the US! Hope the weather is beautiful wherever you are, and that your grill gives plenty of bounty. :)

I've got some more great quotes for you today. Enjoy!

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

- G K Chesterton

Don't get it right; just get it written.

- James Thurber

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

- Stephen King

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about...)

- C.S. Lewis

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.

- Margaret Atwood

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

- Robert Charles Benchley

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

- John Steinbeck

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.

- William Faulkner

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open up a vein.

- Walter Smith

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

- Peter De Vries

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

- Jean De La Bruyere

Quotes From Famous Writers

Here's some more great quotes for you. Enjoy!!

Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.

- William Somerset Maugham

I have rewritten- often several times- every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasures.

- Vladimir Nabokov

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

- Louise Brooks

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

- Christopher Morley

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

- Ring Lardner

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

- Don Marquis

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

- Lord Byron

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

- Samuel Johnson

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.

- Mark Twain

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

- Mary Heaton Vorse

We don't write what we know.  We write what we wonder about.

- Richard Peck

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

- Baltasar Gracian

Inspirational Quotes

I've got another batch of great quotes for you all. Enjoy!

Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.
- William Somerset Maugham

I have rewritten- often several times- every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasures.
- Vladimir Nabokov

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.
- Louise Brooks

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.
- Christopher Morley

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
- Ring Lardner

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
- Don Marquis

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.
- Lord Byron

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
- Samuel Johnson

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.
- Mark Twain

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
- Mary Heaton Vorse

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.
- Richard Peck

Good things, when short, are twice as good.
- Baltasar Gracian

Quotes from Writers

Here's some more great quotes for you all. Enjoy!

If you wish to be a writer, write.

- Epictetus

Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.

- Leslie Gordon Barnard

A good title should be like a good metaphor.  It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

- Walker Percy

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

- Lawrence Block

Loving your subject, you will write about it with the spontaneity and enthusiasm that will transmit itself to your reader. Loving your reader, you will respect him and want to please him. You will not write down to him. You will take infinite pains with your work. You will write well. And if you write well, you will get published.

- Lee Wyndham

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

- Robert Heinlein

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Review. Reread. Rewrite.

- George Mair

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more.  A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. 

- Patricia Lee Gauch

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) Everybody drinks water.

- Mark Twain

Quotes from Famous Writers

I'm still eyeball-deep in revisions, so no time to write a post today. But I've got some great quotes for you instead! Enjoy!

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

- Jack Kerouac

What the young writer is looking for is not a critic who will slap him on the back and say, ‘Greatest thing since O. Henry,’ but rather the one who will toss the manuscript down in disgust, with ‘You know better than that! It’s rotten! Do it all over again!’

- Henry Sydnor Harrison

Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.

- Jim Tully

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.

- Stephen King

The writing of a mystery story is more of a sport than a fine art. It is a game between the writer and the reader. If, once in a while, a really fine book comes out of this contest, that is good; but the game’s the thing. If, on Page 4, the reader knows that the soda cracker is spread with butter mixed with arsenic, and later on this is proven to be true, then the reader has won the game. If, however, when the reader finishes the book, he says, ‘I didn’t get it—all the clues were there, plain as who killed Cock-Robin, but I didn’t get it,’ then the author has won the game. The author has to play fair, though. He has to arrange his clues in an orderly manner, so that the reader can see them if he looks hard enough.

- Polly Simpson Macmanus

You can’t write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks. But those smaller chunks aren’t good old familiar short stories. Novels aren’t built out of short stories. They are built out of scenes.

- Orson Scott Card

We writers are apt to forget that, as the gunsmoke fogs and the hero rides wildly to the rescue, although the background of this furious action is fixed indelibly in our own minds, it is not fixed in the mind of the reader. He won’t see or feel it unless you make him—bearing always in mind that you can’t stop the gunfight or the racing horse to do the job.

- Gunnison Steele

Quotes From Famous Writers

Here's some more great quotes from great writers. Enjoy!

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

- Stephen King

Make your novel readable. Make it easy to read, pleasant to read. This doesn’t mean flowery passages, ambitious flights of pyrotechnic verbiage; it means strong, simple, natural sentences.

- Laurence D’Orsay

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

- J. P. Donleavy

Rereading reveals rubbish and redundancy.

- Duane Alan Hahn

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

- Ray Bradbury

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

- Thomas Mann

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

- Stephen Covey

Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.

- Pete Murphy

If you're a singer you lose your voice.  A baseball player loses his arm.  A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

- Mickey Spillane

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

- Sylvia Plath

If you tell the reader that Bull Beezley is a brutal-faced, loose-lipped bully, with snake’s blood in his veins, the reader’s reaction may be, ‘Oh, yeah!’ But if you show the reader Bull Beezley raking the bloodied flanks of his weary, sweat-encrusted pony, and flogging the tottering, red-eyed animal with a quirt, or have him booting in the protruding ribs of a starved mongrel and, boy, the reader believes!

- Fred East

Quotes From Famous Writers

Here's some more great quotes for you all. Enjoy!

Success is spelled W - O - R - K.

- Robert Schuller

No one ever committed suicide while reading a book, but many have tried while trying to write one.

- Robert Byrne

What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax.

- Samuel Goldwyn

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

- Jean De La Bruyere

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

- Mark Twain

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 one book.

- Samuel Johnson

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.

- Jane Yolen

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.

- P.G. Wodehouse

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

- Scott Adams

Eighty-five percent of what goes on in a novelist's head is none of his business.

- Stephen King

The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

- John Steinbeck

If you don't like my book, write your own.

If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something.

If you think you can, do. No excuses.

If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like.

Life is too short to be miserable.

If you like my novels, I commend your good taste.

- Rita Mae Brown

More Inspirational Quotes

Here's some more great quotes for you. Enjoy!

If you tell me, it's an essay.  If you show me, it's a story.

- Barbara Greene

A kid is a guy I never wrote down to.  He's interested in what I say if I make it interesting.

- Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.

- Alfred Kazin

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

- Robert Cormier

I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'

- Saul Bellow

Half my life is an act of revision

- John Irving

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart...

- William Wordsworth

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

- Raymond Chandler

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

- Joseph Heller

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I’d type a little faster.

- Isaac Asimov

Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

- Ernest Hemingway

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

- Olin Miller

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

- Beryl Bainbridge

Inspirational Quotes

Here's some more quotes for ya. Enjoy!

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

- Anaïs Nin 

I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire.

- Gordon Lish

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

- Goethe

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Don't say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

- William Zinsser

Don't say the old lady screamed--bring her on and let her scream.

- Mark Twain 

In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.

- Natalie Goldberg

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please will you do the job for me.’

- C.S. Lewis

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world.

- Albert Einstein

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

- Anne Dillard

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

- P. G. Wodehouse (after being asked about his writing technique)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

- Scott Adams

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

- William Faulkner 

Inspirational Quotes

I'm completely entrenched in my current project, and didn't get a chance to finish today's post. So I've got some more great quote for you. Enjoy!

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
- Mark Twain

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
- Robert Frost

Great writing leads constantly into surprises, and the writer should be the first one surprised.
- Bernard Malamud

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
- Stephen Vizinczey

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
- Mark Twain

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' — which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
- Maya Angelou

I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.
- Stanley Elkin

The person who finds the time [to write] is the one who is going to become a writer. The person who doesn’t, won’t.
- Meg Cabot

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
- Jorge Luis Borges

There's a great power in words if you don't hitch too many of them together.
- Josh Billings

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams

When I start a book, I always think it's patently absurd that I can write one. No one, certainly not me, can write a book 500 pages long. But I know I can write 15 pages, and if I write 15 pages every day, eventually I'll have 500 of them.
- John Saul

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
- Sholem Asch

Inspirational Quotes

I had a great post that I wanted to put up today, but I'm elbow-deep in revisions and didn't get it finished. So, I have some more great quotes for you to peruse in the mean time. Enjoy!

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

- Cyril Connolly

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

- Jack London

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

- Samuel Johnson

Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.

- Pete Murphy

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

- Justice Brandeis

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just get up and go to work.

- Chuck Close

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.

- Jane Yolen, Merlin

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

- Lawrence Kasdan

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

- Mark Twain

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.

- Richard Harding Davis

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

- John Osborne

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they are unable to do it themselves.

- Brendan Francis

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

- Paddy Chayefsky

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

- Kate Braverman

More Inspirational Quotes

I've been hunkered down and writing up a storm on my WIP, so I haven't written a blog post for today. Instead, I have more quotes for you. Enjoy!

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
- Tom Clancy

One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel.
- John Gardner

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

You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children.
- Madeleine L'Engle

If you stay true to your characters, the story will take care of itself.
- Eve Byron

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.
- Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.
- Louise Brooks

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
- Gloria Steinem

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'not at this address.' Just keep looking for the right address.
- Barbara Kingsolver

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Conner

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
- de Chateaubriand

The shorter and plainer the better.
- Beatrix Potter

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

Being creative is head-pounding, nail-biting, hard work no matter what your profession. So bottom line—ya gotta find the humor in it or you'll die like a rat on the road.
- Richard Krzemien

Inspirational Quotes

Life has been insane for me these past six months. Regular life is always busy, but we've had some majorly huge things on top of that. Only one of which was my knee surgery in February. We've had at least one other life-altering thing on top of that, so it's been really hard to sit down and read or write effectively. There have been days when I sit in front of the computer and don't have the energy to get anything out.

The huge things are over now, and life should be getting back to normal. In the mean time, though, I need some major inspiration. I've been gathering great quotes for the past ten years or so, and these never fail to get me back on track. So, I thought I'd share some with you today. Maybe we'll all feel inspired and start off the week on the right foot. So, here you go:

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
- Somerset Maugham

I write when I'm inspired, and see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.
- Peter De Vries

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.
- Orson Scott Card

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
- Robert Frost

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.
- Maxim Gorky

You can't sit around and wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London

Writing is easy: All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
- Gene Fowler

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
- Winston Churchill

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.
- Frank A. Clark

Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
- Steve Martin

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.
- Edmund Morrison

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
- Pearl Buck

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
- Anonymous

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
- John Irving