Writers And Writing Quotes

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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

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.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

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

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money’s in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

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

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.