Chekhov once scolded another writer: "Your laziness stands out between the lines of every story. You don’t work on your sentences. You must, you know. That is what makes art."

"Write a little everyday, without hope and without despair."

–Isak Dinesen

"Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing."

–Ezra Pound

"No tricks. Period. I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap or even elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover."

-- Raymond Carver

About the writing of fiction: "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place."

–Carver?

"No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind."

–Henry James

" . . . and suddenly everything became clear to him."

-- Chekhov

"Make it new."

–Ezra Pound

"Something glimpsed from the corner of the eye in passing."

–V.S. Pratceti

"The hardest part of writing, is writing."

–Robert Lees

"Remember only this thing," said Badger. "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves."

Crow and Weasel, Barry Lopez

"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money."

–Jules Renard

"Some books leave us free and some books make us free."

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."

–W.H. Auden

"Every man is a volume if you know how to read him."

–William Ellery Channing

"My books are like water; those of great geniuses are wine–everybody drinks water."

–Mark Twain

"What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax. "

--Samuel Goldwyn

"No passion on Earth, neither love nor hate, is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."

–H.G. Wells

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.

– Meg Chittenden

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.

– Erica Jong

Making a book is a craft, as is making a clock; it takes more than wit to become an author.

– Jean de LaBruyere

The analysis of the carnal soul is done on your own skin, not behind a desk.

– Paul Leautaud

Sitting down to scribble is merely the end of a long process, much of which looks like loafing.

– Adrian Bedford

The absolute requirement for creativity is blindfolding the judge.  The first part of the creative process needs to be free of inhibitions. Later on, when ideas are fully formed, there is plenty of time to scrutinize them.

– Joan Borysenko

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who has no imagination has no wings.

– Muhammad Ali

When a man does not write poetry, 

it escapes by other vents through him.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I listen so that I may decipher the mystery of myself

and become more whole.

– Richard Moss

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me. I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe.

– Anais Nin

The poet is, after all, very human,

a person who deals with the truth as he/she sees it,

who writes about those special moments in life

which have given him/her excruciating pain or joy.

– Judith Minty

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.

– Henry Ward Beecher

Times are bad.

Children no longer obey their parents,

and everyone is writing a book.

– Cicero

Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred,

is stronger than a writer's need

to change another writer's copy.

– Arthur Evans

To create, one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction, and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion, and meaning.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.

Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

– Groucho Marx

I like to write in coffee shops and diners where no one knows me,

and where there is a stimulating but unobtrusive background life

that I can observe or ignore.

– Donald Murray

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage

over the man who can't read them.

– Mark Twain

I might write four lines or I might write twenty.

I subtract and I add until I really hit something.

You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

– Grace Paley

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

– Oscar Wilde

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards.

If you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.

– Ronald Reagan

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons

out of the hands of fools.

Let's start with typewriters.

– Solomon Short

The artist's only responsibility is to his art.

He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate;

the Ode to a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

– William Faulkner

To realize originality one has to have the courage to be an amateur.

– Marianne Moore

Poetry does not consist in saying everything,

but in making one's dream everything.

– Charles Augustin Sainte Beuve

The world I create in writing

compensates for what the real world does not give me.

– Gloria Anzaldua

The unsaid, for me, exerts great power ...

– Louise Glock

The lesson of official life goes rumbling on.

We send inspired notes to one another.

– Tomas Transtromer

... and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress him in feminine attire, but instead I pressed his margin release over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness. Presently ... I realized with shame what I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a submissive typewriter, any color or model. No electric typewriters, please!

– Rick Kleiner

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

– Franklin Jones

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

– Moses Hadas

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.

It should be thrown with great force.

– Dorothy Parker

Rock journalism is people who can't write

interviewing people who can't talk

for people who can't read.

– Frank Zappa

Creative minds have always been known

to survive any kind of bad training.

– Anna Freud

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter.

Some day I intend reading it.

– Groucho Marx

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

– Groucho Marx

If you don't have anything nice to say about anyone, come sit by me.

– Alice Longworth

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

– Thomas Berger

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

– Ray Bradbury

It is with words as with sunbeams.

The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

– Robert Southey

Language shapes consciousness,

and the use of language to shape consciousness is an

important branch of magic.

– Starhawk

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing

is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

– Truman Capote

You can't depend on your judgment

when your imagination is out of focus.

– Mark Twain

My body has certainly wandered a good deal,

but I have an uneasy suspicion

that my mind has not wandered enough.

– Noel Coward

I use sounds as it pleases my own ear, and my ear likes lots of sounds.

Sound and repetition. I like "music" in poems.

– Charles Wright

Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself.

– Lewis Carroll

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

– Alfred Hitchcock

In the process of writing, your energy gradually begins appearing in every line; eventually the lines don't resemble anyone else's because they are all composed of your energy.

– Robert Bly

A poet needs to keep his wildness alive inside him.

– Stanley Kunitz

The true genius shudders at incompleteness ~ and usually prefers silence

to saying something which is not every thing it should be.

– Edgar Allen Poe

My technique, as always, is to make the thing feel right.

– Gary Gildner

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,  Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

– Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. 1649_1720

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,

and some few to be chewed and digested.

– Sir Francis Bacon. 1561 - 1626

The difference between fiction and reality?

Fiction has to make sense.

– Tom Clancy

One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem,

and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

– Goethe

The first draft of anything is shit.

– Ernest Hemingway

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

– James Michener

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

– Jack London

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep.

– Scott Adams

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

– Truman Capote

It is a great thing to write.

To be no longer yourself,

but to move in an entire universe of your own creation.

– Flaubert

There are three rules for writing a novel.

Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

– W. Somerset Maugham

He has not learned the lesson of life

who does not every day surmount a fear.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

– Natalie Goldberg

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

– Flannery O'Conner

Writing is like getting married.

One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

– Iris Murdoch

The real purpose of books

is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

– Christopher Morley

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

– George Moore

Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much.

This is always a great satisfaction.

– Katherine Mansfield

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.

– Truman Capote

It has been said that writing comes more easily

if you have something to say.

– Sholem Asch

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.

Just get people to stop reading them.

– Ray Bradbury

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.

  – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and, lastly, the solid cash.

– Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

– Colette

Prose is words in their best order;

Poetry is the best words in the best order.

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new,

but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.

– Goethe

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric.

Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

– William Butler Yeats

To have great poets there must be great audiences too.

– Walt Whitman

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things

which escape those who dream only by night.

– Edgar Allen Poe

If I had to give young writers advice,

I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

– Lillian Hellman

The rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

– John Barth

I feel at times that I'm making up these little people and I've lost my mind.

– Carolyn Chute

I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.

– William Carlos Williams

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

– Percy Bysshe Shelley

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling

of the words being there, written in invisible ink

and clamoring to become visible.

– Vladimir Nabakov

Transforming is not lying.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

When the writer becomes the center of his attention, he becomes a nudnik. And a nudnik who believes he's profound is even worse than just a plain nudnik.

– Isaac Bashevis Singer

You know, you don't always have a choice of what you're going to write.

You're not a cow that can give cream with one udder

and milk with another.

– Bruce Duffy

Savor them in your mouth, try them on your typewriter.

– Ray Bradbury

I believe in not quite knowing.

A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning.

I write out of curiosity and bewilderment.

– William Trevor

I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.

Writing is my way of making other chances.

– Anne Tyler

When I get a little money, I buy books;

and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

– Desiderius Erasmus

What I fear in writing is the safe decision.

– Anne Rice

A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind,

and they can change their meanings right in front of you.

They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

– John Steinbeck

One writes to make a home for oneself,

on paper, in time, in others' minds.

– Alfred Kazin

When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean __

neither more nor less.

– Humpty Dumpty (Lewis Carroll)

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,

Falling like dew upon a thought, produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

– Lord Byron

We write to taste life twice,

in the moment and in retrospection.

– Anais Nin

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls;

For, thus friends absent speak.

– John Donne

Whenever books are burned

men also, in the end, are burned.

– Heinrich Heine

Even paperback books have a far longer lifespan than computers.

It's a humble thing, a book, but the interface doesn't change

and they don't need software upgrades and new operating systems.

A five dollar paperback book will dance on the grave

of a five thousand dollar computer.

– Bruce Sterling

I've been writing a book.

I've got the page numbers done.

– Stephen Wright

Properly, we should read for power.

Man reading should be man intensely alive.

The book should be a ball of light in your hand.

– Ezra Pound

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home,

but unlike charity, it should end there.

– Clare Boothe Luce

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

Your manuscript is both good and original,

but the part that is good is not original,

and the part that is original is not good.

– Samuel Johnson

Every writer knows there is magic in tools.

Writing comes from the ink, the pen, the typewriter,

the paper, even the word processor, as much as the brain.

– Donald Murray

We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.

– Anais Nin

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book;

in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or asides

hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear;

the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader;

the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as if in a mine,

until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

– Virginia Woolf

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope big enough for the manuscript to come back in.

This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

– Ring Lardner

Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.

– Rudyard Kipling

It's kind of sad. They have their pads out and their pens,

and they're ready to hear the secret, to write it down.

There isn't any secret. You sit down and you start and that's it.

– Elmore Leonard (on writing workshops)

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of,

but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

– Robert A. Heinlein

If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you'd be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.

– John D. MacDonald

When words fail, music speaks.

– Hans Christian Anderson

I wrote the story myself.

It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.

– Mae West

From your parents you learn love and laughter

and how to put one foot before the other.

But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.

– Helen Hayes

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.

That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written

by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own,

as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith

to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

Every man, when he gets quiet,

when he becomes desperately honest with himself,

is capable of uttering profound truths.

We all derive from the same source.

There is no mystery about the origin of things.

We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians;

we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.

– Henry Miller, Sexus

The one thing I regret

is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.

– Francoise Sagan

Anyone who has got a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.

– Cicero

Better to write for yourself and have no public,

than to write for the public and have no self.

– Dame Rose Macaulay

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero,

but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

– Groucho Marx

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting,

poetry, music, architecture or philosophy,

he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

– J. P. Donleavy

A powerful agent is the right word.

Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words

the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

– Mark Twain

When you read a book,

you hold another's mind in your hands.

– James Burke

Beware of the man who denounces women writers;

his penis is tiny.

– Erica Jong

It's the good girls who keep the diaries;

the bad girls never have the time.

– Tallulah Bankhead

I always say, keep a diary and someday it'll keep you.

– Mae West

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts:

they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Properly, we should read for power.

Man reading should be man intensely alive.

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

– Ezra Pound

Having your book turned into a movie

is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

– John LeCarre

I chose and my world was shaken. So what?

The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.

You have to move on.

– Stephen Sondheim

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity ~

any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or

 better.

– John Updike

Creativity can solve almost any problem.

The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

– George Lois

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm

between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

– Isaac Bashevis Singer

The way you activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise.

– Robert Fritz

I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction.

I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta.

I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance

and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

All living things are our brothers and sisters.

Above all I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals,

and I value a society that makes their existence possible.

– Kenneth Clark

Drawing on my fine command of the English language,

I said nothing.

– Robert Benchley

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.

– Norman Podhoretz

If you have an important point to make,

don't try to be subtle or clever.

Use a pile driver. Hit the point once.

Then come back and hit it again.

Then a third time – a tremendous whack!

– Winston Churchill

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from

an overdose of satisfaction.

– Salvador Dali

Most conversations are simply monologues

delivered in the presence of a witness.

– Margaret Millar

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.

There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative

and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.

So what the hell, leap.

– Cynthia Heimel

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

– Elbert Hubbard

The thirst of desire is never filled nor fully satisfied.

– Cicero

Complete possession is proved only by giving.

All you are unable to give possesses you.

– Andre Gide

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add,

but when there is nothing left to take away.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Those who restrain desire,

do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

– William Blake

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

– Sigmund Freud

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

– Carl Sandburg

Now that we know we can't change the past

we can realize that at this very moment

we have the wonderful opportunity to begin anew!

If you want something

there is simply no better time than right now to pursue it!

– Josh Hinds

When you live in the shadow of insanity,

the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does

is something close to a blessed event.

– R. Pirsig

A man who is 'of sound mind'

is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

– Paul Valery

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone.

It requires no force or effort or sacrifice.

It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

– Deepak Chopra

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder,

with a dash of the dictionary.

– Kahlil Gibran

You wish to see; listen.

Hearing is a step toward Vision.

– St. Bernard

Half of what I say is meaningless;

but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

– Kahlil Gibran

[ William Shakespeare ] [ Robert Bolt ]

Copyright © 2002 by Peter Holzer. All rights reserved.
Revised: 04/07/03 12:31:38 -0700.