From FOR WRITERS ONLY by Sophy Burnham and elsewhere...
"What! Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon!"
-- William Henry, Duke of Gloucester to Edward Gibbon, 1781
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." -- W. Somerset Maugham
"This morning I took the hyphen out of Hell-hound and this afternoon I put it back." -- Edwin Arlington Robinson
"In the end, all books are written for your friends." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down... If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
"An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again." -- Roy Blount, Jr.
"'Yes,” I said, suddenly becoming serious. “I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and through my own observations that Providence, Nature, God, or what I would call the Power of Creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally. And I am certainly one who does, with all my heart. So I have discovered as a result of what I can only call miracles that whenever my inner self desires something subconsciously, life will somehow grant it to me." -- Arthur Rubenstein
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. As soon as you trust yourself you will know how to live."
-- Johann Wolfgang Goethe
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The writer is also a fool. He is the easiest man in the world to belittle, ridicule, dismiss, and scorn; and that also is precisely as it should be. He is also mad, measurably so, but saner than all the others with best sanity, the only sanity worth bothering about — the living, creative, vulnerable, valorous, unintimidated and arrogant sanity of a free man." -- William Saroyan
"Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action." -- Brendan Francis
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" -- E.M. Forster
"It is the act of writing that produces ideas, not the other way around." -- Sophy Burnham
"Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake."
-- Eudora Welty
"Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead."
-- Red Smith
"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it."
-- H.G. Wells
"The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero." -- Mary McCarthy
"I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.' " -- Saul Bellow
"I have a lion inside me, and I have to feed it words every few days; when I don’t, it begins to eat me instead."
-- Sophy Burnham
"I was always my own teacher." -- Eudora Welty
"Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy." -- Nikki Giovanni
"Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know." - - William Zinsser
"There are two kinds of writers in the world: bad writers and improving writers." - - William Blundell
"Every writer I know has trouble writing." - - Joseph Heller
"I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write." - - Aldous Huxley
"There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes."
- - William Makepeace Thackeray
"The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe." - - David Hare
"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning. I wanted to know what I was going to say." - - Sharon O'Brien
"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." - - William Faulkner
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out - - Ray Bradbury
"I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud" - - Anonymous
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." - - Edwin Schlossberg
"The faster I write, the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them." - - Raymond Chandler
"Work extra hard on the beginning of your story, so it snares reader's instantly. And know how you're going to end your story before you start writing. Without a sense of direction, you can get lost in the middle." - - Joan Lowery Nixon
"An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes." - - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood - - Jr. Teague
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent re-writer." - - James Michener
"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
"Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head." - - Anonymous
"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." - - Mark Twain
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." - - Mark Twain
"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing." - - Enrique Jardiel Poncela
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." - - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The writer does the greatest good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time."
- - Sydney Smith
"A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident." - - W. Somerset Maugham
"Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill." - - Edmund Morrison
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
- - Mark Twain
"What! Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon!"
-- William Henry, Duke of Gloucester to Edward Gibbon, 1781
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." -- W. Somerset Maugham
"This morning I took the hyphen out of Hell-hound and this afternoon I put it back." -- Edwin Arlington Robinson
"In the end, all books are written for your friends." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down... If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
"An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again." -- Roy Blount, Jr.
"'Yes,” I said, suddenly becoming serious. “I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and through my own observations that Providence, Nature, God, or what I would call the Power of Creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally. And I am certainly one who does, with all my heart. So I have discovered as a result of what I can only call miracles that whenever my inner self desires something subconsciously, life will somehow grant it to me." -- Arthur Rubenstein
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. As soon as you trust yourself you will know how to live."
-- Johann Wolfgang Goethe
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The writer is also a fool. He is the easiest man in the world to belittle, ridicule, dismiss, and scorn; and that also is precisely as it should be. He is also mad, measurably so, but saner than all the others with best sanity, the only sanity worth bothering about — the living, creative, vulnerable, valorous, unintimidated and arrogant sanity of a free man." -- William Saroyan
"Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action." -- Brendan Francis
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" -- E.M. Forster
"It is the act of writing that produces ideas, not the other way around." -- Sophy Burnham
"Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake."
-- Eudora Welty
"Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead."
-- Red Smith
"If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it."
-- H.G. Wells
"The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero." -- Mary McCarthy
"I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.' " -- Saul Bellow
"I have a lion inside me, and I have to feed it words every few days; when I don’t, it begins to eat me instead."
-- Sophy Burnham
"I was always my own teacher." -- Eudora Welty
"Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy." -- Nikki Giovanni
"Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know." - - William Zinsser
"There are two kinds of writers in the world: bad writers and improving writers." - - William Blundell
"Every writer I know has trouble writing." - - Joseph Heller
"I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write." - - Aldous Huxley
"There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes."
- - William Makepeace Thackeray
"The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe." - - David Hare
"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning. I wanted to know what I was going to say." - - Sharon O'Brien
"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." - - William Faulkner
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out - - Ray Bradbury
"I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud" - - Anonymous
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." - - Edwin Schlossberg
"The faster I write, the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them." - - Raymond Chandler
"Work extra hard on the beginning of your story, so it snares reader's instantly. And know how you're going to end your story before you start writing. Without a sense of direction, you can get lost in the middle." - - Joan Lowery Nixon
"An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes." - - F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood - - Jr. Teague
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent re-writer." - - James Michener
"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
"Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head." - - Anonymous
"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." - - Mark Twain
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." - - Mark Twain
"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing." - - Enrique Jardiel Poncela
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." - - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The writer does the greatest good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time."
- - Sydney Smith
"A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident." - - W. Somerset Maugham
"Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill." - - Edmund Morrison
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
- - Mark Twain