Quotes About Writing

I see myself in everything I write. All the good guys are me.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.

In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.

Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.

Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.

The first book really was kind of an entertaining textbook for the homemaker. I couldn't find a good book about entertaining in 1982, and neither could my friend, so I decided to write it.

How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one

My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

Writers never get a very good deal in Hollywood.

I know the Chicago media will write a lot of bad things, but they'll write a lot of good things too. I can live with that. In Cleveland, all I got was negative press.

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?

Good reading makes for damn hard writing.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.