Quotes About Inspiration

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won't betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.

Please do it your own way. Do it in the mornings when your mind is cold Do it in the evenings when everything is sold. Do it in the springtime when springtime isn't there Do it in the winter We know winter well Do it on very hot days Try doing it in hell. Trade bed for a pencil Trade sorrow for a page No work it out your own way Have good luck at your age.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.