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Writer Gallery

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

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 Quote

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

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.