150+ Writing Quotes Every Author Needs to Read Now

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

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

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

The first draft of anything is shit.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

The desire to write grows with writing.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.