my favourite...quotes about writing :: writers write

'Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks - chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.'

Fran Lebowitz

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

Gene Fowler

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

Isaac Asimov

my favourite...quotes about writing :: some cheeky ones

'I get a lot of letters from people.  They say "I want to be a writer.  What should I do?"  I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.' 

Ruth Rendell

I like to write when I feel spiteful: it's like having a good sneeze.

D.H.Lawrence

Many (modern novels) have a beginning, a muddle and an end.'
Philip Larkin

‘There are three rules for writing a novel.  Unfortunately no-one knows what they are.’

Somerset Maugham

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

Ring Lardner

 

'Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.'

Groucho Marx

my favourite...quotes about writing :: ain't that the truth

'Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.'

Henry David Thoreau

 

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

William Saroyan

'I have never know any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.'

Baron de Montesquieu

 

'The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.'

Charlotte Bronte

'Wanting to know an author because you like his work is like wanting to know a duck because you like paté.'

Margaret Atwood

'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction, after all, has to make sense.'

Mark Twain

 

'Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.'
Ian McEwan

'Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.'

Cicero, circa 43 BC

my favourite...quotes about writing :: ways to go about it

'I can't start writing until I have a closing line.'

Joseph Heller

"You can fix a bad page, you can't fix a blank page."

Nora Roberts

 

'When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "one word at a time."'
Stephen King:

'I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.'

Norman Mailer

'You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart.  You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names.  You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world.  Come to it any way but lightly.  Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.'

Stephen King