The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.
The waste basket is the writer's best friend.
Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
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.
It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
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.
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
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.
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.
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.
If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
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