Quoted!
Writing
Good work doesn't happen with inspiration. It comes with constant, often tedious and deliberate effort. If your vision of a writer involves sitting in a cafe, sipping an aperitif with one's fellow geniuses, become a drunk. It's easier and far less exhausting.-- William Hefferman
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.-- Michael Crichton
In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.-- Sydney Smith
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.-- Maugham, W. Somerset
There is no great writing, only great rewriting.-- Justice Brandeis
Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.-- Gene Fowler
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.-- Robert Charles Benchley, author
Art is the manipulation of someone else's imagination.-- Sol Saks, Funny Business
The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn't write.-- Unknown
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.-- Robert Frost:
If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse shit.-- Stephen King
The effort involved in writing a short story is as intense as beginning a novel, where everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and some times even the personality of a character.-- Prologue -'Strange Pilgrims' - Gabriel Gacia Marquez
Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.-- P.G. Wodehouse
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.-- James A Michener
Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.-- Moliere
To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.-- Eudora Welty
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.-- W. Somerset Maugham
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.-- Doris Lessing
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
Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.-- Pete Murphy
Anybody can write a short story --a bad one, I mean-- who has industry and paper and time enough; but not everyone may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills. The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more that he makes haste to blot. Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rigths; instinct--the instinct of self-preservation-- forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks.-- Robert Louis Stevenson, My first book "Treasure Island"
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.-- William Faulkner (1897-1962), U.S. novelist.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.-- Ezra Pound (1885-1972), U.S. poet, critic.
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.-- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), U.S. author.
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, "I will tell you a story," and then he passes the hat.-- Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Canadian novelist, journalist.
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.-- Rudolph Erich Rascoe
I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't discipline equals creativity.-- Bret Easton Ellis
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.-- Graham Greene
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.-- Joan Didion
Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.-- Alex Haley
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.-- Margaret Atwood
There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.-- John Kenneth Galbraith
When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.-- Alberto Moravia
An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.-- Irwin Shaw
I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.-- Isaac Asimov
I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.-- William Styron
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.-- Samuel Johnson
Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.-- Lawrence Kasdan
On the whole, audiences prefer that art be not a mirror held up to life, but a Disneyland of the soul, containing Romanceland, Spyland, Pornoland and all the other escape lands which are so much more agreeable than the complex truth.-- Geoffrey Wiseman
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.-- Benjamin Franklin
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Writing is a struggle between presence and absence.-- Lu Ji
The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endue it.-- Samuel Johnson
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.-- Madeleine L'Engle
Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.-- Samuel Johnson
The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.-- Thomas Mann
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.-- Rudyard Kipling
The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.-- Tom Clancy
Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it.-- Barry N. Malzberg
...talents of the novelist:...observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations...-- Virginia Woolf
Next to the originator of a sentence is the first quoter of it.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.-- Lillian Hellman (1905-84), U.S. playwright. New York Times (21 Feb. 1960).
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.-- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), British author.
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.-- James Baldwin (1924-87), U.S. author.
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.-- William Faulkner (1897-1962), U.S. novelist.
For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.-- George Orwell (1903-50), British author. Inside the Whale and Other Essays, "Inside the Whale" (1940).
That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.-- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), U.S. author.
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.-- G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher.
An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), English statesman, author.
There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.-- Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), Rumanian-born U.S. writer.
No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.-- Robert Byrne
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.-- Hilaire Belloc
I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.-- Isaac Asimov
Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.-- Pablo Picasso
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.-- Margaret Atwood
Getting even is one reason for writing.-- William Gass
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.-- Georges Simonen
Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.-- Tirso de Molina
A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.-- Joyce Cary
Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.-- Irwin Shaw
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.-- Agatha Christie
Nothing beats a good book.-- Nunzio Nappi
Close the door. Write with _no one_ looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.-- Barbara Kingsolver
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.-- Jean Jacques Rousseau
No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.-- Stephen King, The Body
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.-- Muriel Rukeyser
Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.-- H.G. Wells
Getting published
That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.-- Natalie Goldberg
Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.-- A. A. Milne
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.-- Robert Benchley (1889-1945), U.S. humorous writer.
If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.-- Don Marquis
There's only one thing more frightening than being asked to do a book tour, and that's not being asked to do a book tour.-- Gerald Petievich
We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.-- from The Humanist Association of Canada Spring 1992 Newsletter, which also noted "For writers only - Every writer has received rejection slips; too many of them for most. The "Financial Times" has quoted the 'mother of all rejection slips', translated from a Chinese economic journal."
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.-- John Mortimer (b. 1923), British barrister, novelist. Quoted in: Times (London, 27 Dec. 1987).
The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.-- Calvin Trillin
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.-- Gore Vidal (b. 1925), U.S. novelist, critic.
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.-- Clarence Darrow
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.-- Oliver Herford
I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.-- Dorothy Parker
For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.-- Sir James M. Barrie
Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity, it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.-- V. S. Pritchett
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.-- Samuel Johnson
Editors, publishers
There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.-- Theodore H. White
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.-- T. S. Eliot
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.-- H.G. Wells
As difficult as it is for a writer to find a publisher -admittedly a daunting task - it is twice as difficult for a publisher to sort through the chaff, select the wheat, and profitably publish a worthy list.-- Olivia Goldsmith
One of the signs of Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he once had a publisher shot.-- Siegfried Unseld
You ask for the distinction between 'Editor' and 'Publisher': an editor selects manuscripts; a publisher selects editors.-- Max Schuster
The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.-- Alfred Knopf
In the publishing business you have to learn to greet failure with the same handshake as you would success.-- Eddie Bell
Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell for them somewhere.-- Goethe
Everyone needs an editor.-- Tim Foote
Publishing is no longer simply a matter of picking worthy manuscripts and putting them on offer. It is now as important to market books properly, to work with the bookstore chains to get terms, co-op advertising, and the like. The difficulty is that publishers who can market are most often not the publishers with worthy lists.-- Olivia Goldsmith
The publisher is a middleman, he calls the tune to which the whole rest of the trade dances; and he does so because he pays the piper.-- Geoffrey Faber
Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons.-- William Targ
I see my [editorial] role as helping the writer to realize he or her intention. I never want to impose any other goal on the writer, and I never want the book to be mine.-- Faith Sale
The job of an editor in a publishing house is the dullest, hardest, most exciting, exasperating and rewarding of perhaps any job in the world.-- John Hall Wheelock
Not all writers can work with all editors. A project that is taken on with great enthusiasm by an editor may bog down because the chemistry isn't right.-- Betty A. Prashker
'The New York Times' list is a bunch of crap. They ought to call it the editor's choice. It sure isn't based on sales.-- Howard Stern
The successful editor is one who is constantly finding new writers, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.-- A. Scott Berg
One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy.-- John Gardner
Critics
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his space shall never be one with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.-- Theodore Roosevelt
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.-- Mark Twain
Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.-- Jean Sibelius
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.-- Brendan Francis Behan
Asking a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.-- John Osborne
It's those damn critics again.-- Irwin Shaw
There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.-- Irwin Shaw
By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.-- Ralph Ellison