Writing Quotes

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

If I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

There is quite enough sorrow and shame amd suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.

I don't care what is written about me, so long as it isn't true.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.