I found I had way more than 25 quotes from famous authors for you, so I’ve broken my post up into two parts. There will still be leftovers, so I may do a third part sometime in the future…
“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
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
—Madeleine L’Engle
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
–Stephen King
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
–Anaïs Nin
“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
–Mark Twain
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
—Toni Morrison
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
—Jack Kerouac
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
—Benjamin Franklin
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.“
–-Saul Bellow
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
–-Robert Frost
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.“
–-Ray Bradbury
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.“
—Aldous Huxley
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
–-Henry David Thoreau
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
—Thomas Mann
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.“
–-Sylvia Plath
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.“
—Robert Louis Stevenson
“You can make anything by writing.”
—C.S. Lewis
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
—Margaret Atwood
“Tears are words that need to be written.“
—Paulo Coelho
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
—Virginia Woolf
“To survive, you must tell stories.”
—Umberto Eco
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
—Charles Baudelaire
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”
–-Isaac Asimov
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
–-Albert Camus
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.“
― John Steinbeck
“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
― Hermann Hesse
“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.“
― Norman Mailer
“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.“
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.“
–-Thomas Jefferson
“Writers live twice.”
– Natalie Goldberg
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.“
—Herman Melville
“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.”
–Ayn Rand
“Writing is its own reward.“
—Henry Miller
“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.“
—Sidney Sheldon
“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.”
—Erica Jong
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
—Douglas Adams
“Half my life is an act of revision.”
—John Irving
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
—William Faulkner
“Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.”
—A. A. Milne
“Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.”
― Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
