150+ Writing Quotes Every Author Needs to Read Now

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Never put off writing until you are better at it.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

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

All I need is a sheet of paperand something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

DWIGHT:Stay smart. Stay cool. It's time to prove to you're friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying. Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.