Some Quotes about Writing by Some Famous People (And Some People I've Never Heard Of)

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


Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.  ~E.L. Doctorow


I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.  ~Richard Wright,American Hunger, 1977


If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.  ~Toni Morrison


It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.  ~Vita Sackville-West


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


Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth


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


To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make.  ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967


Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"


Be obscure clearly.  ~E.B. White


Every writer I know has trouble writing.  ~Joseph Heller


A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare.  For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.  ~Henry David Thoreau


An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.  ~Gustave Flaubert


Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of 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.  ~George Orwell, "Why I Write," 1947


Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.  ~Goethe