Writing Quotes

And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.

~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

~ Grace Paley

Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I think it's incomparably sweet when someone writes something for you.. even if it doesn't rhyme or even if it isn't very amorous.. even two lines of hatred written for you acknowledges the fact that someone spent a little of his time thinking about you.

~ Sanhita Baruah

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.

~ Sara Sheridan

The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there are no sure cures.

~ John Gardner

I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our working environment will be a change for the better.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you'll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other's work as someone working in the same genre.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.

~ Sara Sheridan

To write a good book, you must read one book for each page of the book you are about to write.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to.

~ Sara Sheridan

Crime writers, I've noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven't been caught yet!

~ Sara Sheridan

Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

An author really ought to have nothing but flowers in the room where he works.

~ Gaston Leroux

Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope - to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that way, to maybe, just now and then, to change the world.

~ Sara Sheridan

I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

~ Sara Sheridan

When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the samefirst thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboeplayer feels: winning a little, losing some, the gambler sees theglorious possibilities, exactly as the young oboist feels an indescribablethrill when he gets a few phrases to sound like realmusic, phrases implying an infinite possibility for satisfactionand self-expression. As long as the gambler or oboist is onlyplaying at being a gambler or oboist, everything seems possible.But when the day comes that he sets his mind on becoming a professional, suddenly he realizes how much there is to learn, how little he knows.

~ John Gardner

One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.

~ Sara Sheridan

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

~ Sara Sheridan

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. — It is not fair. — He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths. — I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it — but fear I must.

~ Jane Austen

Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun.

~ Dani Shapiro

Writers begin with a grain of sand, and then create a beach.

~ Robert Black

When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.

~ Sam Shepard

I became a writer so that the voices inside my head would become an acceptable occurrence.

~ Janae Mitchell

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding.

~ Brenda Ueland

I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work — one that is just about respectfully showing up for your vocation day after day, steadily doing your best, and letting go of the results. Not going to war against anyone else, or against their talents, or against themselves.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The most difficult thing about writing, is writing the first line.

~ Amit Kalantri

As long as music survives, poetry will never die.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.

~ Kingsley Amis

I don't want to write soft, easy fiction; I want to write fiction that challenges.

~ Brian A. Mcbride

If you're frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you'll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Each night, I close my eyes and dream. In the morning, I open my eyes again, but the dreaming doesn't stop.

~ Christy Hall

This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet.

~ Rebecca Solnit

What is it about us lady authors and our fascination for the exclamation mark?

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

I know it's difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.

~ Christy Hall

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

~ Shannon Celebi

It's hard to be a dreamer sometimes. I'm tired.

~ Christy Hall

Wine and a straitjacket. That pretty much sums it up.

~ Shannon Celebi

No.'It's not a bad word. And it is very important to use at times. Practice saying it in the mirror. It's empowering.

~ Christy Hall