Favorite Quotes

The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him. Rachel Carson

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop. William Saroyan

To a chemists, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are an inherent in life as the good ones. Anton Chekov

Read, read, read. Read everything– trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.

One should never write down or up, but out of yourself. Christopher Isherwood

Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to…This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece. John Creasy

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it. W. Somerset Maugham

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is done. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. John Steinbeck

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write. W. Somerset Maughm

Loneliness is your companion for life. If you don’t want to be lonely, you get into TV. William Styron

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say that appears on the paper. Isaac Bachevis Singer

You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages. Leon Uris

I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write, I feel like shit. Ernest Hemingway

Art is life seen through a temperament. Emile Zola

Art is an attempt to integrate evil. Simone de Beauvoir

All art has this characteristic– it unites people. Leo Tolstoy

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. William Styron

You could never know enough about your characters. W. Somerset Maughm

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly. Isaac Bashevis Singer

I listen to the voices. William Fauilkner

All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols. Tennessee Williams

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake the thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. George Orwell

I write to ease the passing of time. Jorge Luis Borges