100+ Writing Quotes & Sayings

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.

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A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

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Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

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Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.

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If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

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you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

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A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

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I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.

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The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

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With writing, we have second chances.

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If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

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Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

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

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Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

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A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

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Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

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Good fiction creates its own reality.

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

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You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

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Writers write while dreamers procastinate.

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You can fix anything but a blank page.

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A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.

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Writing is both mask and unveiling.

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A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

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Chase your dreams until you catch them...and then dream, catch, and dream again!

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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

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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.

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All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

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No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

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The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

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In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

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This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.

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I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

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A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

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If a story is in you, it has to come out.

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We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

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...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

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The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

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When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.

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