Writing Quotes Extraordinaire

"Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one." ~ Salman Rushdie

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"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit." ~ Richard Bach

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A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people." ~ Thomas Mann

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Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~ Gene Fowler

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I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
~ James Michener

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Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. ~ George Orwell, "Why I Write," 1947

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Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov

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Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
~ Jules Renard, "Diary," February 1895

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"Every person who loves the written word has known a firefly moment. It is the moment at which a single word ignites a sentence or a perfect phrase illuminates a page. The writer who can successfully cultivate the firefly gift eventually will make it to the top. How do the writers bring it off? They look intensely at the world around them and they file away images that may come in handy someday. Go, now, and make fireflies of your own." ~ James Kilpatrick

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One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~ Hart Crane

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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.
~ Robert Benchley

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No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. ~ Van Wyck Brooks

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I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~ Elmore Leonard

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Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. ~ Samuel Butler

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If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~ Toni Morrison

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The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. ~ Vladimir Nabakov

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I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. ~ Peter De Vries

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Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~ Joseph Heller

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When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
~ Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

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If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~ Lord Byron

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What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. ~ Burton Rascoe

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A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Summing Up, 1938

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Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.
~ Finding Forrester

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It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~ Sinclair Lewis

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Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
~ Franz Kafka

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A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

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Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
~ Jules Renard, Journal, 10 April 1895

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Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
~ Franklin P. Adams, Half a Loaf, 1927

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An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
~ Chateaubriand, Le Génie du Christianisme, 1802

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I do not like to write - I like to have written. ~ Gloria Steinem

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The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. ~ Samuel Johnson

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Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~ Goethe

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The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.
~ Robert Cromier

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Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
~ William Faulkner