There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury
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
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith
The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. ~Norbet Platt
Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O'Brien
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. ~Vladimir Nabakov
Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies. ~Emme Woodhull-Bäche
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. ~Karl Kraus
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. ~Catherine Drinker Bowen
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams
Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
~Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~Lord Byron
A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head. ~Ethel Wilson
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
My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin. ~Karl Kraus
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. ~Lord Byron
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. ~Theodore Dreiser
Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~From the movie Finding Forrester
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis
Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~E.B. White
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~Franz Kafka
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann
Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. ~Jules Renard
Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too. ~Graycie Harmon
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. ~André Gide
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. ~Edna Ferber
The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin
I even shower with my pen, in case any ideas drip out of the waterhead. ~Graycie Harmon
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads. ~William Styron
There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. ~Jessamyn West
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane
Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence. ~Fay Weldon
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke
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
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. ~Samuel Johnson
There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. ~William Makepeace Thackeray
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe
Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted. ~Jules Renard
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it. ~Leo Rosten
Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. ~Susan Sontag
A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing. ~Eugene Ionesco
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. ~Samuel Lover
Writing is its own reward. ~Henry Miller
The pen is the tongue of the mind. ~Miguel de Cervantes
It only takes one person to change your life – you. ~Ruth Casey
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
You are the same today as you'll be in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read. ~ Charlie 'Tremendous' Jones
Reading is a discounted ticket to everywhere ~ Mary Schmich
