Great Writing Quotes - Page 3

• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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• It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

  Jack Kerouac

  Writing, Way, Inspiration To Write

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

  John Updike

  Kings, Hero, Writing

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• Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.

  Larry L. King

  Writing, Blogging, Shortcuts

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• When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

  Stephen King

  Hurt, Children, Writing

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• What no wife of a writer can ever understand...is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.

  Burton Rascoe

  Writing, Wife, Window

  "Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes, Mostly Humorous" by Bennett Cerf, (p. 118), 1948.

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• To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Writing, Voice, Design

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• 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

  Flower, Writing, Oddities

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• I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

  Roald Dahl

  Hate, Book, Reading

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  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

  Jules Renard

  Fashion, Writing, Air

  Jules Renard, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Roget (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.79, Tin House Books

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• I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

  Peter De Vries

  Work, Writing, Written Word

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• All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

  Steve Almond

  Lying, Reading, Writing

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• When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

  Margaret Laurence

  Mean Girls, Jobs, Writing

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• Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

  Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Writing, Pieces, Crafts

  On the Art of Writing "On Style" (1916)

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• Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Careers, Inspire

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Whole

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

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• Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.

  George Singleton

  Writing, Flames, Desks

  George Singleton (2008). “Pep Talks, Warnings, And Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom And Cautionary Advice For Writers”, p.59, Writer's Digest Books

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• Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

  John Steinbeck

  Writers And Writing, Whole, Writing By Writers

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• Just write every day of your life. Read intensely.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Writers Block, Writer's Block

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• Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

  John Updike

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

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• Don't look back until you've written an entire draft.

  Will Self

  Looks, Written

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Excuse

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• Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate, Obsession, Intense

  Franz Kafka (1995). “The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories”, Random House LLC

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• 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

  Inspirational, Wise, Writing

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