WRITERS ON WRITING



“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
-Robert Heinlein

“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
-W. Somerset Maugham

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because, by that time, I was too famous.”
-Robert Benchley

“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”
-Daphne du Maurier

THE WRITING WORLD



“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“Always be nicer to those younger than you because they are the ones who will be writing about you.”
-Cyril Connolly

“God is love, but get it in writing.”
-Gypsy Rose Lee

“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.”
-Solomon Short

REJECTION, REJECTION, READ ALL ABOUT IT



“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
-Ray Bradbury , advice to writers

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.”
-Isaac Asimov

“A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.”
-Ring Lardner

“Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.”
-Samuel Johnson

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
-T. S. Eliot

YOU’VE GOTTA KEEP ‘EM MOTIVATED



“The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.”
-Inigo DeLeon

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.”
-Leonard Bernstein

ON WRITING



“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.”
-Leo Rosten

“Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.”
-Stanislaw J. Lec, Unkempt Thoughts

“Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.”
-Thomas Berger

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
-Thomas Mann

“If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”
-Victor Hugo

THE CRAFT OF WRITING



“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
-Oscar Wilde

“There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.”
-Saul Bellow

“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”
-Samuel Johnson, Boswell's Life of Johnson

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