David Lovelock collects quotations on writing.
"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit." Richard Bach
"Everything in this book may be wrong." Richard Bach
"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats." Richard Bach
"Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan." Richard Bach
"Only a few people are interested in what you have to say, but that's all right. You don't tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds, remember." Richard Bach
"True love stories never have endings." Richard Bach
"Normal is a setting on a washing machine." Christopher Barzak
"… there can be no second paragraph until you have a first." Jacques Barzun
"Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published." Jacques Barzun
"First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word." Jacques Barzun
"I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it." Jacques Barzun
"No subject of study is more important than reading… all other intellectual powers depend on it." Jacques Barzun
"Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for." Jacques Barzun
"The French call 'mot juste' the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out." Jacques Barzun
"The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form." Jacques Barzun
"The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers." Jacques Barzun
"We are thus led to ask what the writer looks for and how he trains himself to look for it. The answer is: he makes himself habitually aware of words, positively self conscience of them about them, careful to follow what they might say and not to jump to what they might mean." Jacques Barzun
"I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet." Ludwig van Beethoven
"Music comes to me more readily than words." Ludwig van Beethoven
"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write." Saul Bellow
"A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study." Saul Bellow
"A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life." Saul Bellow
"A writer is a reader moved to emulation." Saul Bellow
"A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?" Saul Bellow
"All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac." Saul Bellow
"Every book, every story, has a sort of invisible signature at the front. And when you've written the first few lines of a story, those govern all the rest that follows." Saul Bellow
"I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it." Saul Bellow
"I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because… well, it interferes with the business of writing." Saul Bellow
"I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.' " Saul Bellow
"People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned." Saul Bellow
"We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next." Saul Bellow
"Books and harlots have their quarrels in public." Walter Benjamin
"Books, too, begin like the week—with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday." Walter Benjamin
"It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work." Walter Benjamin
"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like." Walter Benjamin
"Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction." Walter Benjamin
"The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out." Walter Benjamin
"The book borrower…proves himself to be an in venerate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures…as by his failure to read these books." Walter Benjamin
"True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original." Walter Benjamin
"Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven." Walter Benjamin
"You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps—his tastes, his interest, his habits." Walter Benjamin
"… a book, a real book, language incarnate, becomes a part of one's bodily life." Wendell Berry
"Books were a dependable pleasure." Wendell Berry
"I'm a writer more than I am a talker." Wendell Berry
"If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?" Wendell Berry
"Never forget: we are alive within mysteries." Wendell Berry
"Once precision is abandoned as a linguistic or literary virtue, vague generalization is one of the two remaining possibilities, gibberish being the second." Wendell Berry
"One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox." Wendell Berry
"Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told." Wendell Berry
"There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems." Maeve Binchy
"I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer." Maeve Binchy
"I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance." Maeve Binchy
"I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident." Maeve Binchy
"Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life." Maeve Binchy
"Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that." Maeve Binchy
"I'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane—I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation." Maeve Binchy
"In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!" Maeve Binchy
"The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say." Maeve Binchy
"You say to yourself: 'What could people, in all these countries, find in my books?' and yet I think we're all the same, anywhere. Everybody is a hero or a dramatic person in their own story if you just know where to look." Maeve Binchy
"All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with." Maeve Binchy
"I've seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards." Maeve Binchy
"I was just lucky I lived in this time of mass-market paperbacks." Maeve Binchy
" 'I'm an aspiring writer.' I hate that phrase. You're either a writer or you're not." Jake Black
"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." Karen Blixen
"A great artist is never poor." Karen Blixen
"Who tells a finer tale than any of us. Silence does." Karen Blixen
"Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems." Pseudonymous Bosch
"I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it." Lord Brabazon
"A computer does not smell … if a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better… And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry." Ray Bradbury
"First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!" Ray Bradbury
"Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations." Ray Bradbury
"There is only one type of story in the world—your story." Ray Bradbury
"No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of interest does to a new author!" Judith Brocklehurst
"I write because I cannot NOT write." Charlotte Brontë
"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it." Charlotte Brontë
"How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time." Fred Brooks
" 'Google' is not a synonym for 'research'." Dan Brown
"A reader's desire to guess what I've hidden is always more exciting than anything I can show." Dan Brown
"Authors. Even the sane one are nuts." Dan Brown
"Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors." Dan Brown
"For me, a good thriller must teach me something about the real world. Thrillers like 'Coma,' 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Firm' all captivated me by providing glimpses into realms about which I knew very little—medical science, submarine technology and the law." Dan Brown
"I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping." Dan Brown
"I learned early on not to listen to either critique—the people who love you or the people who don't like you." Dan Brown
"I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about." Dan Brown
"I read nonfiction almost exclusively—both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters." Dan Brown
"I remember devouring the entire Hardy Boys series over one summer, enthralled by their bravery and cleverness." Dan Brown
"I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold." Dan Brown
"I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material." Dan Brown
"It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really—it is, for me, that simple." Dan Brown
"Well, you know, in any novel you would hope that the hero has someone to push back against, and villains—I find the most interesting villains those who do the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. Either one is interesting. I love the gray area between right and wrong." Dan Brown
"Wide acceptance of a quote is not the proof of its validity." Dan Brown
"Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos—thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough." Dan Brown
"A writer is someone who wrote this morning." Roberta Jean Bryant
"Overthinking results in paralysis by analysis." Roberta Jean Bryant
"The first law of writing is: "To Write" is an active verb. Thinking is not writing. Writing is putting words on paper." Roberta Jean Bryant
"Thinking isn't useful in the first stages of writing." Roberta Jean Bryant
"I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop." Anthony Burgess
"We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it." Anthony Burgess
"He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed sea—for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the never-ending wonders of the many books." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, 'Tarzan and the Lost Empire', there are 31 books on my list." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"I write to escape; to escape poverty." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"Imagination is but another name for super intelligence." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature." Edgar Rice Burroughs
"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them." Samuel Butler
"Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such." Samuel Butler
"I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong." Samuel Butler
"I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable." Samuel Butler
"It is easier to be long than short." Samuel Butler
"The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them." Samuel Butler
"The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them." Samuel Butler
"When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence." Samuel Butler
"Words are clothes that thoughts wear." Samuel Butler
"Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use." Samuel Butler