On Writing Quotes - Page 3

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

Raymond Chandler

I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.

Craig Claiborne

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.

Phyllis A. Whitney

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

You can fix anything but a blank page.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Write what should not be forgotten.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

Joyce Carol Oates

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

Flannery O'Connor

In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

Joyce Carol Oates

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?

Rainer Maria Rilke