"A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost."
-Henry James
"I had to write for people that are dying and grieving-that's everybody."
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
"No two identical persons ever existed. Consequently, if you speak or write from yourself you cannot help being original."
-Brenda Ueland, If you Want To Write
"It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write."
-Sinclair Lewis
"if there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
-Toni Morrison
"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
-Anaïs Nin
"Once you are enlightened like that, you realize that you have to write a different story."
-Chinua Achebe
"What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you do, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself--and thus make yourself indispensible."
-Andre Gide
"In my own work I write only what I want to read--understand fully and indelibly that if I don't do it no one else is so vitally interested, or capable of doing it to my satisfaction--I write all the things I should have been able to read."
-Alice Walker
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word... Is the difference between lightning and the lighting bug."
-Mark Twain
"No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."
-Virginia Woolf, A room of One's Own
"Write down the thought of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable."
-Francis Bacon
"I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you."
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
"I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas as soon as they strike, but the ones that fill up the quickest are always the ones at my nightstand."
-Terri Guillemets
"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."
-Toni Morrison
"Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at the bottom, to be more themselves."
-Aldous Huxley
"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say."
-Sharon O'Brien
"As diarists and letter writers repeatedly prove, any attempt at narrative can give value to and experience which might otherwise evaporate away."
-V.S. Naipaul, Becoming a Writer
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make."
-Truman Capote
"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium."
-Norbet Platt
"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad."
-Lord Byron
"Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious."
-Annie Lamott, Bird By Bird
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
-Anton Chekhov
"Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly."
-Annie Lamott, Bird By Bird
"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."
-Elmore Leonard
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
-E.L. Doctorow
"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment."
-Hart Crane
"The writer studies literature, not the world. He lives in the world; he cannot miss it… He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know."
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
"Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life."
-James Norman Hall
"Writing is a product of silence."
-Carrie Latet
"Your job [as a writer] is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others."
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
-Mark Twain
"In order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent."
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
"Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread you work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague."
-William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"
"When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint."
-Charles Lutwidge Dogson (Lewis Carroll)
"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke."
-Arthur Polotnik