“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” – Ray Bradbury
"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." —William Faulkner
"Tears are words that need to be written." —Paulo Coelho
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." —Robert Frost
"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."—Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott Card
"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”
—Elmore Leonard
—Elmore Leonard
“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. … Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”— William Zinsser
It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly. — C. J. Cherryh
Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing. —Melinda Haynes
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends. —Friedrich Nietzsche
If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word. —Margaret Atwood
Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little.—Holly Gerth
You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. —Octavia E. Butler
As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.—Ernest Hemingway
“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it." — Cal Fussman
“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’—George Orwell
“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”—Annette Gordon-Reed
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. —Lillian Hellman
"Beware of advice - even this." — Carl Sandburg
