If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
Writing is the flip side of sex - it's good only when it's over.
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
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.
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.
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