If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.
- Jodi Picoult
I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.
- Lloyd Alexander
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
- Ernest Hemingway
Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read -- something most important what I should not try to write.
- Dorothy Allison
What's so great about writing?"
"You can make anything true
- Adi Alsaid
I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.
- Jeffrey Archer
Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.
- Meg Cabot
Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
- Cameron Crowe
The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.
- Russell Banks
One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.
- Joseph Barbera
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
- Hilaire Belloc
...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
- Alan Bennett
It ain't just about writing on some documents,
author writes on to the readers' heart and mind.
- Toba Beta
I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.
- Judy Blume
What will you do?"
"Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie."
"What are you going to call it?"
"Hollywood."
"Hollywood?"
"Yes..."
And here it is. (Hollywood, pg. 239)
- Charles Bukowski
What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.
- Rick Riordan
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
- Augusten Burroughs
That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.
- Michael Chabon
This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.
- Stephen King
Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they donot why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad.
- Stephen King
And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.
- Sandra Cisneros
The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.
- Virginia Woolf
Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the strain. The devilish thing about writing is that it calls upon every nerve to hold itself taut. This is exactly what I cannot do--
- Virginia Woolf
The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. I chose the accident, but I could just as easily have started with any point during my thirty-five years of life before that. Why not start with: I was born in the year 19-, in the city of -?
- Andrew Davidson
I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.
In the water I am beautiful.
- Kurt Vonnegut
The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.
- Jeffery Deaver
The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
- John Green
The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously.
- Richard Denney
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.
- Kate Dicamillo
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
- Annie Dillard
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.
- Annie Dillard
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
- Milan Kundera
One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can't drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.
- Andre Dubus Iii
For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.
- Gregg Easterbrook
I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.
- William Faulkner
If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.
- Shelby Foote
You really don't understand the first thing about writing...for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.
- Cornelia Funke
I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.
- Peter Gabriel
I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?
- Mavis Gallant
The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.
- Rachel Gibson
Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.
- John Grisham
It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.
- Ayumi Hamasaki
I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.
- Laurell K Hamilton
I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.
- Tom Stoppard
I think my voice worked out fine, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was very self-conscious about it. I was a bit self-conscious about writing lyrics too.
- Jerry Harrison
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
- Lillian Hellman
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
- Lillian Hellman
The band projects just took natural priority. I didn't really have a solo career, just wanted to share the music in another way and to learn more about writing, recording, etcetera.
- Ken Hensley
I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!
- Brooklyn Hudson
What I like most about reading is I can read in minutes what it took the author hours to write. What I like most about writing is readers can read in minutes what it took me seconds to write.
- Jarod Kintz
I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.
- Markus Zusak
The best thing about writing is the reader
- Girish Kohli
When we first started playing in the early days, none of us really had any idea about writing our own songs yet. We were struggling how to learn our instruments and play songs to be able to perform for people.
- Wayne Kramer
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable
- Alfred Lansing
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.
- Steig Larsson
There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.
- Jennifer Weiner
Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.
- Courtney Love
One of the strangest things about writing well is that it requires two different zones in the brain--rigor and recklessness--simultaneously.
- Carole Maso
What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.
- Harry Mathews
Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.
- Matthew Mcgrory
The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic.
- James K Morrow
I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.
- Walter Mosley
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.
- Walter Mosley
It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.
- Alison Moyet
Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.
- Ryan Murphy
The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.
- Stewart O Nan
That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that.
- Ellen Wittlinger
There is something very cool about writing your worst memories through someone else's eyes. You start to see what happened to you... almost as if it happened to somebody else. Especially if that made-up person is nice, it's a great exercise because there are many mean people in this world.
- Carol Plum Ucci
Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.
- Jerry Pournelle
There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
- Beatrix Potter
My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs.
- Manuel Puig
I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
- Nora Roberts
One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
- Stephen Sondheim
I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body.
- Chris Stocking
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
- E B White
About writing:The trick is to make sure you love what you've produced--to Believe..in order to convince.
- Christina Westover
[When asked about Writing Conferences]
You meet people that will change your life.
- Susan Wingate
Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.
- James Young
- Jodi Picoult
I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.
- Lloyd Alexander
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
- Ernest Hemingway
Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read -- something most important what I should not try to write.
- Dorothy Allison
What's so great about writing?"
"You can make anything true
- Adi Alsaid
I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.
- Jeffrey Archer
Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.
- Meg Cabot
Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
- Cameron Crowe
The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.
- Russell Banks
One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.
- Joseph Barbera
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
- Hilaire Belloc
...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
- Alan Bennett
It ain't just about writing on some documents,
author writes on to the readers' heart and mind.
- Toba Beta
I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.
- Judy Blume
What will you do?"
"Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie."
"What are you going to call it?"
"Hollywood."
"Hollywood?"
"Yes..."
And here it is. (Hollywood, pg. 239)
- Charles Bukowski
What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.
- Rick Riordan
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
- Augusten Burroughs
That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.
- Michael Chabon
This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.
- Stephen King
Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they donot why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad.
- Stephen King
And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.
- Sandra Cisneros
The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.
- Virginia Woolf
Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the strain. The devilish thing about writing is that it calls upon every nerve to hold itself taut. This is exactly what I cannot do--
- Virginia Woolf
The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. I chose the accident, but I could just as easily have started with any point during my thirty-five years of life before that. Why not start with: I was born in the year 19-, in the city of -?
- Andrew Davidson
I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.
In the water I am beautiful.
- Kurt Vonnegut
The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.
- Jeffery Deaver
The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
- John Green
The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously.
- Richard Denney
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.
- Kate Dicamillo
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
- Annie Dillard
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.
- Annie Dillard
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
- Milan Kundera
One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can't drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.
- Andre Dubus Iii
For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.
- Gregg Easterbrook
I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.
- William Faulkner
If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.
- Shelby Foote
You really don't understand the first thing about writing...for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.
- Cornelia Funke
I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.
- Peter Gabriel
I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?
- Mavis Gallant
The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.
- Rachel Gibson
Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.
- John Grisham
It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.
- Ayumi Hamasaki
I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.
- Laurell K Hamilton
I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.
- Tom Stoppard
I think my voice worked out fine, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was very self-conscious about it. I was a bit self-conscious about writing lyrics too.
- Jerry Harrison
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
- Lillian Hellman
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
- Lillian Hellman
The band projects just took natural priority. I didn't really have a solo career, just wanted to share the music in another way and to learn more about writing, recording, etcetera.
- Ken Hensley
I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!
- Brooklyn Hudson
What I like most about reading is I can read in minutes what it took the author hours to write. What I like most about writing is readers can read in minutes what it took me seconds to write.
- Jarod Kintz
I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.
- Markus Zusak
The best thing about writing is the reader
- Girish Kohli
When we first started playing in the early days, none of us really had any idea about writing our own songs yet. We were struggling how to learn our instruments and play songs to be able to perform for people.
- Wayne Kramer
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
- Jhumpa Lahiri
I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable
- Alfred Lansing
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.
- Steig Larsson
There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.
- Jennifer Weiner
Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.
- Courtney Love
One of the strangest things about writing well is that it requires two different zones in the brain--rigor and recklessness--simultaneously.
- Carole Maso
What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.
- Harry Mathews
Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.
- Matthew Mcgrory
The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic.
- James K Morrow
I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.
- Walter Mosley
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.
- Walter Mosley
It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.
- Alison Moyet
Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.
- Ryan Murphy
The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.
- Stewart O Nan
That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that.
- Ellen Wittlinger
There is something very cool about writing your worst memories through someone else's eyes. You start to see what happened to you... almost as if it happened to somebody else. Especially if that made-up person is nice, it's a great exercise because there are many mean people in this world.
- Carol Plum Ucci
Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.
- Jerry Pournelle
There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
- Beatrix Potter
My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs.
- Manuel Puig
I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
- Nora Roberts
One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
- Stephen Sondheim
I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body.
- Chris Stocking
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
- E B White
About writing:The trick is to make sure you love what you've produced--to Believe..in order to convince.
- Christina Westover
[When asked about Writing Conferences]
You meet people that will change your life.
- Susan Wingate
Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.
- James Young
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