Quotes About Writing

Nexus I wrote stubbornly into the evening. At the window, a giant praying mantis rubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass, begging vacantly with pale eyes; and the commas leapt at me like worms or miniature scythes blackened with age. the praying mantis screeched louder, his ragged jaws opening into formlessness. I walked outside; the grass hissed at my heels. Up ahead in the lapping darkness he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green, a brontosaurus, a poet.

Writers will happen in the best of families.

The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it

One night you delete all your suicide notes from your computer. If things go bad again, it's not like you can't write a new one.

Huh. Veronica Mars, speechless. I'll have to write this one in my feelings journal.

I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.

I read a few of those books on how to write a screenplay, but, just like I told you with the school thing, once again, most of those books are written by someone who's never written a good script. You look at the writer's credits and they've written one episode of The Golden Girls or something. People who write good scripts, write scripts. They don't write books about writing scripts.

biography much easier. On a personal note, I should like to thank Stanley R. Moore, Dr. Michael Rostafinski, and John Tebbel for advice and information; my wife and "first reader," Reade Johnson; and my editor at John Wiley, Hana Lane, for

Dr. Michael Rostafinski, and John Tebbel for advice and information; my wife and "first reader," Reade Johnson; and my editor at John Wiley, Hana Lane, for

Remind me to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers.

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

Well - I started writing - probably in the early 60s and by say '65-'66 I had read most of the poetry that had been published - certainly in the 20 years prior to that.

I find that I have been scribbling away for nearly an hour. Miss Gisborne keeps on saying that I am too prone to the insertion of unnecessary hyphens, and that it is a weakness. If a weakness it is, I intend to cherish it.

Elmo found, as have many, that the death of the heart corrupted the pen into writing a farrago of horrors and insanities, not necessarily the less true for their seeming extravagance, but inaccessible for the most part to the prudent.

One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you've got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You'll be off and running.34

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.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

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.

Writing is hard enough. Writing can be doubly hard when one tries to write to some unseen, unknown crowd of folks in Peoria or any other spot on the planet.

A direct relationship exists between the caliber of the writing you read and the caliber of the writing you make.

Some days I am on the road. Some days I am reading, and some days I am copying quotes. Some days I am writing letters, and some days I am writing chapters. There are no days when I am not working on the craft. There are no days when I am not a writer

I know I am finished with a book when I never want to see it again. And if you have worked at it long enough to hate the sight of it, I promise you will come to love it again some sweet day. That is when you will know you did a writer's work.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.