Writing Quotes

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

It is in their 'good' characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self-revelations.

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.