Because every
story begins
with words

Stephen King

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

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

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Joseph Conrad

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

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

E. B. White

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

Christopher Hampton

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

William Goldman

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

Thomas Jefferson

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

C. J. Cherryh

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

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

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

Robert A. Heinlein