Quotes About Creativity

Most editors are failed writers — but so are most writers.

The traditional sacrifices of a writer are soul and sleep.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.

I write because... every writer has only one story to tell, really, and I haven't told mine yet.

Writing is both a sacrificing and a saving of soul.

My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a "bless the mark" at any spot, and to begin a sentence with "Lord" comma.

Writers are just people who have a whole lot on the inside that they need to get to the outside, with pen and paper their preferred method of transport. Same with dancers, artists, and singers — all the same urges with differing transportation.

When I stop the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

Writing is easy. You just sit down and focus — but not too hard.

An author plants the alphabet — and harvests flowers, nourishment, and weeds.

Writer's block is a disease for which there is no cure, only respite.

Pen and ink is wit's plough.

"Mr. Harte, what books shall I read to acquire a perfect style?" "Oh, lord!" he groaned, swinging around in his chair, "for pity's sake, don't read anything! Just write! Write! Write!"

Writing isn't hard; no harder than ditch-digging.

Some writers have beautiful poetry inside that explodes from the pen into prose. Others hold their inner prose until it implodes to poetry.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

No sooner do I get interested than bang! goes my sleep, and I have to stop a week or ten days, during which my ideas get all cold again.

Reading in bed is a gateway drug to writing in bed.

Some authors write with a grave ink, of a dramatic pen dipped into their dark souls.

I was learning then that the terrible thing about being a writer is that you don't decide to be one, you discover that you are one.

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear — and devils, too.

The pen is a tree whose fruit is expression.

My only cure for writer's block is insomnia.

If I'm trying to sleep, the ideas won't stop. If I'm trying to write, there appears a barren nothingness.