Quotes on “writing”

Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

I have spent a good many years since

A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.