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"I had a monumental idea this morning, but
I didn’t like it." — Samuel Goldwyn
"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash,
classics, good and bad, and see how they do it."
— William Faulkner
"Of all the ways of acquiring books,
writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method."
— Walter Benjamin
"The reason 99% of all stories written are
not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that
are left on the closet shelf at home." — John Campbell
"When ideas fail, words come in very
handy." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"The most poignantly personal autobiography
of a biographer is the biography he has written of another man." — George
Jean Nathan
"I have always imagined that Paradise will
be a kind of library." — Jorge Luis Borges
"If my books had been any worse I should
not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I
should not have come." — Raymond Chandler
"What would I do if I had only six months
left to live? I'd type faster." — Isaac Asimov
"If you're a singer you lose your voice. A
baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's
good, the older he gets, the better he writes." — Mickey Spillane
"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 re-writers." — James A.
Michener
"A blank piece of paper is God’s way of
telling us how hard it is to be God." — Sidney Sheldon
"I don't think any good book is based on
factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew
before he wrote them." — Carlos Fuentes
"Those who write clearly have readers;
those who write obscurely have commentators." — Albert Camus
"A good novel tells us the truth about its
hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
— G. K. Chesterton
"If an man wishes to write in a clear
style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if he would write in a
noble style, let him first possess a noble soul." — Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence
should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences,
for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a
machine no unnecessary parts." — William Strunk, Jr.
"The writer is the Faust of modern society,
the only individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries, he
seems a semi-madman." — Boris Pasternak
"Men of strong minds and who think for
themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of
their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will
neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on
discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land
hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both by right of
conquest and of discovery." — C. C. Colton
"I discovered that rejections are not
altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment
and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you'." — Saul
Bellow
"Writing is not a profession, occupation or
job; it is not a way of life: it is a comprehensive response to life."
— Gregory McDonald
"A classic is something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read." — Mark Twain
"A classic is a book that doesn’t have to
be written again." — Carl Van Doren
"I am convinced that anyone can be a great
writer . . . if he can only . . . tell the naked truth about himself and
other people. That, a little technique with words and the willingness to
bare heart, soul and body, are really all it takes. But few people know
the truth, and fewer have the artistic intent and perhaps ruthlessness to
tell it." — Clive Barnes
"A writer is someone who can make a riddle
out of an answer." — Karl Kraus
"A writer writes not because he is educated
but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to
communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to
be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants
to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes
him different from others." — Leo Rosten
"I write whenever it suits me. During a
creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When
I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking
down dictation, I stop." — Francois Mauriac
"To steal ideas from one person is
plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research." — Anonymous
"In a very real sense, the writer writes in
order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the
publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratifications, is a curious
anticlimax." — Alfred Kazin
"There are three rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." — Somerset Maughan
"The best stories don't come from 'good vs.
bad' but from 'good vs. good’. " — Leo Tolstoy
"He neither walks with the multitude nor
cheers with them. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never
stops." — William Saroyan
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the
reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
— Robert Frost
"When I was a little boy, they called me a
liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer."
— Isaac Bashevis Singer
"It's true that writing is a solitary
occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group
of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them." — Anne
Tyler
"Everyone who has ever taken a shower has
had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and
does something about it that makes a difference." — Nolan Bushnell
"No passion in the world is equal to the
passion to alter someone else's draft." — H. G. Wells
"There is no secret to success except hard
work and getting something indefinable which we call the "breaks." In
order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things —read and write—and
wait."
— Countee Cullen |
