Writers On Writing Quotes

There is an audience for everything, our job as writers is to do the work and provide readers with a choice.

~ Elizabeth Hernandez

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I enjoyed?' I've been writing about a subject I love as long as I can remember--horses and the people associated with them, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. I couldn't be happier knowing that young people are reading my books. But even more important to me is that I've enjoyed so much the writing of them.

~ Walter Farley

I live within my daydreams and nightmares; through that, I have learned to create, and I never cease from doing so.

~ Shannon A. Thompson

You may be a serious writer if ….10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub.8. a day without Roget’s Thesaurus is a day without sunshine.7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis.6. you’ve ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn’t want to stop for lunch.5. grammar and punctuation turn you on.4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character.3. you’ve worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard.2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere.1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.

~ Kathy Disanto

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

~ W.h. Auden

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

~ Roman Payne

All throughout our lives, we selectively draw on selected shavings of life events and reflect upon them through consciousness, creating an arranged catalogue of senses, faculties, and mental activities that compose our personal life story.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

To write a novel is to dream while awake, then express the dream to the reader in an absorbing way. The road leading from the writer's inner world to the readers' is paved with prose.

~ Alan Joshua

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.

~ Philip K. Dick

Storytelling creates a healing serum. The thematic unguent of our personal story represents a fusion of the ineffable truths that each of us must discover within ourselves.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The womb of the world births us. My filth comes from the same earthwork that gives rise to all stories. My interior light connects me with all the other creatures that inhabit this world of rocks, air, grass, woods, and water. My genetic code links me inextricably with all of nature. I enter the medley in the river of life with the ability to respond as life unfolds before my childlike eyes. My homemade medicinal poultice might not be of any benefit to other people. Nonetheless, we should each write our stories because each of us aims to attain a greater degree of awareness of our own authenticity. We owe a moral obligation to our family, friends, and ourselves as well as to the community to make a determined effort to wring the most out of life. We must applaud all efforts to investigate the human condition. Even if my writing amounts to nothing more than a clumsy attempt to travel the same tracks other people burnished with much more insight, clarity, precision, and style, it is an act of self-definition to ascribe to any philosophy. Philosophy represents a living charter; it is a life of action.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The only difference between writers and people who don't write is that writers aren't afraid to display their demons.

~ Carla H. Krueger

To my faithful readers, because a book is like a pie—the only thing more satisfying than cooking up the story is knowing that somebody might be out there eating it up with a spoon.

~ Sarah Weeks

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

~ Slash Coleman

It is easy to find the problem. Knowing the difference between critique and criticism is the solution. Condition your rawhide for growth. (Either way).

~ Jt Sanz

Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.

~ Flannery O'connor

The proverb, Where there's a will.. sums it up for a writer who had just started in his writing life; for himself, the fictional characters and the audience of his works. It's a trinity of perspectives; one of his struggle, another of the story character which he writes about and the last one of the reader's expectation of his protagonists.

~ Lucas Michael

An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I am sorry, I am not a writer. I simply put my thoughts on paper. Those helped by them call them a book and me a writer. Those who are not helped call it rubbish and me a fool. Both have reason.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

One day I will write a book. An epitaph

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Every book has its ancestors

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Writing is exposing yourself to strangers

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Writing is a competition between the writer and the page. When the page wins, you fail as a writer.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone’s story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Every human being carries with them the stories of their ancestors, the story of their generation, and the rudiments of pliable clay to build future storylines that will shape their community of kindred souls. Storytelling unites us as a species and supplies texture to our lives. By listening to other people’s stories and by sharing our personal story, we deftly weave the threads that compose the sacred hoop of the tribe.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is a writer, some are written in the books and some are confined to hearts.

~ Savi Sharma

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.

~ Flannery O'connor

I heard the breeze whisper your name to the trees. And the flowers giggled smiling at the leaves. I and my loneliness keep talking about you.

~ Avijeet Das

As a writer, a poet, you’re not alone in wanting to be alone. Your work is a friendship that never leaves you.

~ Jason E. Hodges

I was a poet. I had no expectations other than creating a world of art with words that would live on long after I was gone.

~ Jason E. Hodges

They say, poetry is dead. I say, was there ever a time they had a clue of what the state of poetry is?

~ Jason E. Hodges

Poets, with no sponsors, no agenda, are the truest form of freedom today, bleeding out every drop of themselves for the world to either hate or devour.

~ Jason E. Hodges

Each morning the winds of the city moan and weep with lost souls clinging to hope of reliving the memories of yesterday.

~ Jason E. Hodges

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you.

~ John Steinbeck

We must carefully cultivate the voice that speaks to us because an internal voice is the ultimate narrator of our charming and delightful personal story or the documentarian of our tragic and disgraceful plotlines. Stories that we tell ourselves become our functional reality, which format structures the concourse of the nested emotional control panel that guides and girds us through the din of the present.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

~ Johnny Rich

...I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I’ve also never understood the logic of excusing a work from the need to tell a story worth telling about people worth knowing simply because the author writes pretty language or has some insights to offer.

~ Glen Hirshberg

Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.

~ Jo Deurbrouck

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

~ Paul Simon