Quotes on Writing

1- 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

2- It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.
~Isabel Colegate

3- You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist, you are learning your craft—then you can add all the genius you like.
~Phyllis Whitney

4- Writing is the only thing that...when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead.
~Gloria Steinem

5- I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
~Ernest Hemingway

6- Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
~Charles Caleb Colton

7- Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.
~Tom Clancy

8- There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~Red Smith

9- If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
~Emile Zola

10- Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous 'inspiration' will not come, write. 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.
~J. B. Priestly

11- If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.
~Steven Galloway

12- Your stuff starts out being just for you… but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it, or criticize it.
~ Stephen King

13- The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector.
~Ernst Hemingway