Writers On Writing Quotes

A good story is one liked. A great story is one that challenges thought, defiant and gets mouths talking.

~ Veronica Purcell

Writers are explorers who find new worlds and use words to bring them to our reality.

~ D. Anne Paris

This is a forum for readers. Authors walk these halls at their own risk. I’ve been to the Coliseum in Rome. GR is just that. Books are gladiators. Readers are ravenous citizens awaiting their next bite of entertainment, all Caesars with thumbs readied for judgement. Even champions fall prey to sword now and then. And you know what they say about the pen and the sword…the analogy is a bit muddled, but it’s in there somewhere.

~ Willow Madison

Rejection is no badge of honour.

~ Johnny Rich

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The reader is, after all, a kind of silent partner in this whole business of writing, and a work of fiction is surely incomplete if it is never read. The reader is, in fact, the writer's only unrelenting, genuine enemy. He has everything on his side; all he has to do, after all, is shut his eyes, and any work of fiction becomes meaningless. Moreover, a reader has an advantage over a beginning writer in not being a beginning reader; before he takes up a story to read it, he can be presumed to have read everything from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac. No matter whether he reads a story in manuscript as a great personal favor, or opens a magazine, or—kindest of all—goes into a bookstore and pays good money for a book, he is still an enemy to be defeated with any kind of dirty fighting that comes to the writer's mind.

~ Shirley Jackson

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

~ Annie Dillard

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

~ Lorraine Hansberry

We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.

~ Annie Dillard

Your dreams don’t stop being dreams because of circumstances.

~ Jason E. Hodges

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Don’t pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

~ Lorraine Hansberry

There is no value in your promises. They are as hollow as fangs and poisonous as the venom within them once I allowed them into my heart.

~ Jason E. Hodges

To be a writer and political is a dangerous thing. To be a writer and apolitical is even more dangerous. Art is right, left; in truth, it has only one direction and that is forward.

~ Chris Campanioni

A poet’s words are like mortar to the bricks of society.

~ Jason E. Hodges

As a writer, you can’t get to where you want to be, coming from the place you started, unless you have something extremely important you want to say to someone who really doesn’t want to know.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Destroying the planet is like stepping from a moving train and thinking it will all work out.

~ Jason E. Hodges

Time heals all wounds, some broken hearts -- and most cases of writer's block.

~ Quentin R. Bufogle

There is a fine line between fair criticism and jealous assault.

~ Fennel Hudson

Publish a book before you’re too old to read it without glasses.

~ Fennel Hudson

Writing with a biro is the emotional equivalent of giving your loved one a plastic rose on Valentine’s Day.

~ Fennel Hudson

Proper writing ink comes in a bottle, can be swirled like brandy in a glass, and smells like apple blossom after rain.

~ Fennel Hudson

When I write, I can be hear. And known. But nobody has to look at me. Nobody has to see me at all.

~ Norah Raleigh Baskin

Whenever people ask me, How are your books doing? or, How is your book doing? I just say, It's okay. I mean, what am I supposed to say? I'm a writer; that means I write because I need to write, because that's how I breathe and that's how I bleed. I'm not an author; I'm a writer. Even when I don't want to write; I can't stop! So, how are my books doing? The hell I know! The moment after I publish one book, I'm writing another one! I don't know how my books are doing! I just know that I'm writing them! I'm a writer, I'm a writer. I'm not an author.

~ C. Joybell C.

Makebelieve is a writer's best friend.

~ Solange Nicole

I don’t know’,” he said. “Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage.” And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer. I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author’s craftsmanship.

~ John William Tuohy

A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world.

~ T.a. Uner

As with writing by candlelight, one’s greatest ideas come from ‘the flickering’ between darkness and light.

~ Fennel Hudson

Committing your thoughts and feelings to words is like putting your soul on a plate and hoping the diners will like what they eat.

~ Fennel Hudson

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

~ E.l. Doctorow

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

~ Rob Bignell

Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.

~ Rob Bignell

The beginning of every writing session is like setting down a road unknown.

~ Rob Bignell

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.

~ M.e. Vaughan

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

~ Don Roff

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...

~ R.d. Ronald

Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.

~ Ron Brackin

The closer one gets to the speed of light, the slower time travels. The exact thing is true when completing a book.

~ Daniel Ionson

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it.

~ Sherry Thomas

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

~ King Samuel Benson

Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy.

~ Don Delillo

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

~ Don Delillo