Because every
story begins
with words

video rain rein reign

Video: When to use rain, rein and reign.

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

Joseph Conrad

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Raymond Chandler

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

Mickey Spillane

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

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

Tom Clancy

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

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

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

Jeanette Walls

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

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

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