Quotes About Writing

ysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.

When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.

Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous.

He quite literally occupied it. At the end of a long oaken table near the window of the Writing Room was "the Hitler Chair." It had the best light for painting postcards. Nobody but Adolf dared sit there. Everybody honored his obsession with the chair, partly out of gratitude: If a Männerheim tenant fell short of his week's rent, Hitler was amazingly fast in organizing a collection.

How is your writing going, Michael?" "Still from the top of the page on down, Mrs. Raglan.

The man who writes a single line, And hears it often quoted, Will in his life time surely shine, And be hereafter noted.

Oh, I will go back to Century House and start again. And go back each night to my small flat and listen to my music and eat my baked beans. And you will go back to Nikki, my friend, and hold her very tight, and write your books and forget all this.

There are several ways of making quick money but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.

The dog may be wonderful prose, but only the cat is poetry.

A writer doesn't solve problems. He allows them to emerge.

Senki sem vonja kétségbe, hogy örömet jelent szórakoztatni és megrázni az embereket, azt az örömet viszont, amit a közönség bosszantása jelent, az írók érdekes módon többnyire tagadják, bár meggyÅ'zÅ'désem, hogy a legtöbb színdarabot kizárólag e célból írták, s nem is a legrosszabbakat.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.

I could write pages and pages about the delights of being a full-time housewife and mother and trying to write and support a family with two babies--but I don't use that kind of language in public.

If you don't write your books, there will be graveyards full of children. (LDStorymakers Conference, May 2015)

If you are a nice person and you are a writer, that's two strikes against you.

This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.

I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.

If you don't believe what I'm telling you, then ask yourself this: would any decent, kind-hearted individual become a writer? Of course not.

Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.

Brandon Sanderson

The original plan for this novella was for it to be 18,000 words. It ended up at around 40,000. Ah well. That just happens sometimes. (Particularly when you are me.)

Some people assume that authors write books because we have vivid imaginations and want to share our vision. Other people assume that authors write because we are bursting with stories, and therefore must scribble those stories down in moments of creative propondidty. Both groups of people are completely wrong. Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.