Writing Quotes

To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work. 

*Sister Mary Lauretta*

The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary.  

*May V. Smith*

Many times we will get more ideas and better ideas in two hours of creative loafing than in eight hours at a desk.   

*Wilfred Peterson*

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. 

*Toni Morrison*

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning:  I wanted to know what I was going to say. 

*Sharon O'Brien*

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. 

*Anton Chekhov*

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. 

*Mark Twain*

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. 

*Anais Nin*

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. 

*Agatha Christie*

Books want to be born: I never make them.  They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. 

*Samuel Butler*

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. 
*Ernest Hemingway* 

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people. 
*Roald Dahl*

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.

*Enid Bagnold*

Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work. … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.
*Stephen King, WD*

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
*Catherine Drinker Bowen*

Style is to forget all styles.
*Jules Renard*

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
*Harper Lee, WD*

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.
*Ray Bradbury, WD*

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.
*Ray Bradbury, WD*

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.
*Ray Bradbury, WD*

I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.
*William Carlos Williams*

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
*Andre Gide*

Writers live twice.
*Natalie Goldberg*