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Video: When to use rain, rein and reign.

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

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

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

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

C. J. Cherryh

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

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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