Quotes (from various dates) There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Benjamin Franklin I can resist everything except temptation.Lord Darlington, Act I of Lady Windermeres Fan by Oscar Wilde You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless. There is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because youre maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. Stephen King Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but dont want to make eye contact while doing it.John Green 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 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 Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to get in touch with your feelings, finetalk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instructs, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts.William Safire If you have to explain your book to me, rewrite it. I know you wont be there when Im reading it.Amanda Patterson Books arent writtentheyre rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasnt quite done it.Michael Crichton All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, youll never write a line. Thats why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.Erica Jong If you wish to be a writer, you must write.Alyice Edrich Fictional characters are a lot like real people. You need to keep them busy.Amanda Patterson The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite.Paul Graham If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? Youre a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak

with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.Richard Rhodes If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while theyre happy.Dorothy Parker I try to leave out the parts that people skip.Elmore Leonard A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.Eugene Ionesco My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.Ernest Hemingway If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, Id type a little faster.Isaac Asimov My dear friend, said Voltaire to a young aspirant who had burdened him with an unpublished manuscript, You may write as carelessly and badly as this when you have become famous. Until then, you must take some trouble. Clive James in Cultural Amnesia When you catch a adjective, kill it.Mark Twain Most people can start a short story or a novel. If youre a writer, you can finish them.Neil Gaiman The best advice on writing I've ever received was, Rewrite it! A lot of editors said that. They were all right. Writing is really rewritingmaking the story better, clearer, truer.Robert Lipsyte If you cant explain it simply, you dont understand it well enough.Albert Einstein The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense.Aldous Huxley It is perfectly okay to write garbageas long as you edit brilliantly.C. J. Cherryh Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?Joan Didion Its your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. Thats the true test of writing. Ernest Hemingway Writing is closer to thinking than speaking.Joseph Joubert A word after a word after a word is power.Margaret Atwood If I fall asleep with a pen in my hand, dont remove itI might be writing in my dreams.Terri Guillemets Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.Tom Stoppard Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.Andr Dubus Writing is a struggle against silence.Carlos Fuentes

Writing is like riding a rollercoaster. There are highs and lows, twists and turns and seconds when you wonder why you ever wanted to ride such a stomach-churning, headache-inducing, heart-pumping mass of mean steel.Buffy Andrews It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.Gerald Brenan If I waited for perfection I would never write a word.Margaret Atwood

[Note: I wrote down pages of these so Im stopping it here.]