"Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write." Robert Penn Warren
"You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing." Doris Lessing
"A woman must have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction." Virginia Woolf
"Stick to the point." W. Somerset Maugham
"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 S. Bernstein
"The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter." Marcel Proust
"I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk." Mignon Eberhart
"The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting." Arthur Schopenhauer
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." E.L. Doctorow
"When genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." D.H. Lawrence
"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective." Ernest Hemingway
"I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next." Laurence Sterne
"Writing a poem is discovering." Robert Frost
"If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average." Derek Walcott
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark TwainV.S. Pritchett
"Write what should not be forgotten…" Isabel Allende
"Even the most productive writers are expert dawdlers…" Donald M. Murray
"Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial…a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer." James Kisner
"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay." Mark Twain
"You have typewriters, presses. And a huge audience. How about raising hell?" Jenkin Lloyd Jones
"Revise and revise and revise - the best thought will come after the printer has snatched away the copy." Michael Morahan
"In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic." Leo Tolstoy
"Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward…" Franz Kafka
"The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to have something to say." Arthur Schopenhauer
"Suspect all your favorite sentences." Kenneth Atchity
"Don't overwrite description in a story - you haven't got time." Elizabeth Spencer
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
Somerset Maugham
"Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style." Matthew Arnold
"…writing comes more easily if you have something to say." Sholem Asch
"You fail only if you stop writing." Ray Bradbury
"Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing…." Bernard Malamud
"Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to." Somerset Maugham
"Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer." Julien Green
"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Thomas Mann
"…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident." H.L. Mencken
"Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory." Chateaubriand
"You must write for yourself, above all. That is [your] only hope of creating something beautiful." Gustave Flaubert
"Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together." Buffon
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." Truman Capote
"I always do the first line well, but I have trouble with the others." Moliere
"A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment." William Sansom
"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else." Grace Paley
"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else." Gloria Steinem
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