Writing By Writers Quotes

• Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

  Gene Fowler

  Inspirational, Writing, Blood

  Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. "Successful Scientific Writing", p. 53, 2000.

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• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Schizophrenia, Form

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Funny Life, Writing, Sound

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• Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

  Harlan Ellison

  Book, Writing, World

  "Quit Your Day Job!: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer". Book by Jim Denney and James D. Denney, 2003.

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• Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

  Richard Miller

  Wrestling, Writing, Way

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• The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Want, Satisfaction

  Mark Twain, Albert Bigelow Paine (1971). “Mark Twain's notebook”, Scholarly Pr

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• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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• Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Athlete, Character

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• Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Epic, Study

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• Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

  Winston Churchill

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  Winston Churchill (1965). “Winston Churchill, His Wit and Wisdom: Selections from His Works and Speeches”

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• Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Intuition, Way

  Ray Bradbury, Steven L. Aggelis (2004). “Conversations with Ray Bradbury”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

  Sidney Sheldon

  Writing, Pieces, Paper

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• Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Born, Company

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Pay, Offers

  Mark Twain (1992). “Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, Volume 1: 1852-1890”, p.644, Library of America

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

  John Steinbeck

  Great Writing, Writers And Writing, Whole

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• 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.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Editors, Rejection

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell 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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• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Reading, Writing

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Congratulations, Writing, Winning

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• Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

  William Wordsworth

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Ernest De Selincourt, Alan G. Hill, Chester Linn Shaver (1967). “The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Volume VIII. A Supplement of New Letters”, p.51, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• 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.

  John Ruskin

  Writing, Reader, Skip

  "A Joy for Ever". Book by John Ruskin, note 6, 1857.

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• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Fleas

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

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• Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Inspiration, Writing, Long

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• Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

  "Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend".

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