Because every
story begins
with words

Christopher Hampton

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

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

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

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

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

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 writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

T.S. Eliot

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

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

Jeanette Walls

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison