David Lovelock collects quotations on writing.
"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it." Roald Dahl
"If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books." Roald Dahl
"I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book." Roald Dahl
"Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people." Roald Dahl
"When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty." Roald Dahl
"If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important." Roald Dahl
"A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not." Roald Dahl
"An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details." Roald Dahl
"The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him." Roald Dahl
"The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it." Roald Dahl
"Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people." Roald Dahl
"When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books." Roald Dahl
"Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so." Roald Dahl
"I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact." Roald Dahl
"Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams." Salvador Dali
"People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings." Salvador Dali
"The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." Salvador Dali
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." Salvador Dali
"Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons." Robertson Davies
"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." Robertson Davies
"Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank 'sincerity' very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly." Robertson Davies
"I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read." Robertson Davies
"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way." Richard Harding Davis
"Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them." Charles de Montesquieu
"I only write when I'm inspired, and I make sure I'm inspired every morning at 9 a.m." Peter De Vries
"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork." Peter De Vries
"Get your character in trouble in the first sentence and out of trouble in the last sentence." Barthe DeClements
"You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic." Ellen DeGeneres
"But I was sure of something, too: it's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching, and rarely discovered—so many locks, not enough keys." Sarah Dessen
"Every plot starts to go wrong just after the first big scene." Ansen Dibell
"It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in." Charles Dickens
"Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!" Charles Dickens
"The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'. " Charles Dickens
"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts." Charles Dickens
"Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb." Annie Dillard
"People know that novelists are liars. And that's why we can be trusted to tell the truth." E.L. Doctorow
"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." E.L. Doctorow
"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." E.L. Doctorow
"Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake." E.L. Doctorow
"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." E.L. Doctorow
"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." E.L. Doctorow
"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." E.L. Doctorow
"Oh Dear, have you swallowed a dictionary?" Downton Abbey
"It's a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own." Arthur Conan Doyle
"The supreme gift of an artist is the knowledge of when to stop." Arthur Conan Doyle
"I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." Arthur Conan Doyle
"If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old." Peter F. Drucker
"Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first ten years." Andre Dubus
"I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol." Alexandre Dumas
"Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities." Alexandre Dumas
"If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful." Alexandre Dumas
"Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without my tools I am fit for nothing." Alexandre Dumas
"There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts." Alexandre Dumas
"There are words which close a conversation as with an iron door." Alexandre Dumas
"Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier." John Gregory Dunne
"I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge." John Gregory Dunne
"I've always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself." John Gregory Dunne
"Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track." John Gregory Dunne
"The professional guts a book through—in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve." John Gregory Dunne
"Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe." John Gregory Dunne