Quotes About Writing

Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible -- if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.)

Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.

if i dont write to empty my mind, i go mad

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

Quién no escribe para gustar a las mujeres?

All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.

Anyone can publish a book. Anyone can be an author. But, not everyone has the authority, authenticity or expertise.

Take the time to focus on what you authored to showcase your authority over just bragging about being an author to build your popularity and engagement.

One time I thought I might try to write my own. About a lady detective. One should follow one's heart, you know, because before you realize it, your time on this earth is done and you're at death's door.

She's never met an adjective or adverb she didn't like.

For writers: If you polish a book too much, it'll be flat and shiny and smooth--and not too interesting. It's the little pits and bumps and whatnot that show voice and make a book unique from all the other super shiny flat surfaces

she added, I'd still have to answer to insurance companies with their time-consuming mounds of paperwork, which would take me away from patient care. Has it really come to this? I thought. Writing as a way to support a living as a doctor? Didn't it used to be the other way around?

I think that a writer should observe the real world before imagining a non-existent one.

When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.

Those who write them do," Ferus said. "They leave bits and pieces behind them when they lay down the words, some scraps and smears of their essential nature." He sniffed. "Most untidy, really—but assemble enough scraps and one might have something approaching a whole.

Books were expensive, as well. But she'd read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers' minds—and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory.

and to my dog, without whom I would not be reminded daily that I am essentially little more than a ridiculous human being who has somehow swindled somebody into paying me to write down conversations with my imaginary friends.

When I started, I was pretty sure I was going to be writing some goofy little wizard novels that might make me some part-time money and would hopefully lead to something I could do better.

Writing writhed across the surface of the stone, runes that looked a little familiar. Norse, maybe? Some of them looked more like Egyptian. They seemed to take something from several different sources, leaving them unreadable.

The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right. I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled, "Fuck subtle.

If I was writing during that window, then I imagine that the story was likely late as well and absolutely needed to be finished, so once again I met with inspiration at the corner of Late and Hurry up.

To be a writer you have to write, not sit around reading books about how to do it.