Writing Quote #25

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon, I put it back in."

- Oscar Wilde

Writing Quote #24

"Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement. The ordinary world of work is closed to him -- and that if he's lucky!"

- Peter Straub

Writing Quote #23

"Most people don't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else."

- Katherine Ann Porter

Writing Quote #22

"The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the books down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation."

- Lary Niven

Writing Quote #21

"My stories run up and bite me in the leg. I respond by writing them down - everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off."

- Ray Bradbury

Writing Quote #20

"Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind."

- Rudyard Kipling

Writing Quote #19

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new."

- Samuel Johnson

Writing Quote #18

"It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way."

- Ernest Hemingway

Writing Quote #17

"Put weather in."

- Joseph Hansen

Writing Quote #16

"The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story--and then your story!"

- Ford Madox Ford

Writing Quote #15

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."

- T. S. Eliot

Writing Quote #14

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

- E. L. Doctorow

Writing Quote #13

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."

- Isaac Asimov

Writing Quote #12

"A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print."

- Marguerite Yourcenar

Writing Quote #11

"Pay attention to the sound of words."

- Dave Wolverton

Writing Quote #10

"Art is the manipulation of someone else's imagination."

- Sol Saks

Writing Quote #9

"It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? f you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that."

- Stephen King

Writing Quote #8

"I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

- Clarence Budington Kelland

Writing Quote #7

"The expert at anything was once a beginner."

- Rutherford B. Hayes

Writing Quote #6

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."

- Stephen Covey