‎"I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest." - John Buchan




Interviewer asked S.J. Perelman how many drafts of a story he did:
"Thirty-seven. I once tried thirty-three, but something was lacking, a certain—how shall I say?—je ne sais quoi. On another occasion, I tried forty-two versions, but the final effect was too lapidary—you know what I mean, Jack? What the hell are you trying to extort—my trade secrets?"








Ibn Tibbon (c. 1190): A man's mistakes in writing bring him into disrepute; they are remembered against him all his days. As our sages say: "Who is it that uncovers his nakedness here and it is exposed everywhere? It is he who writes a document and makes mistakes therein."











‎"Don't seek to be published. Seek to be read." Tracy Hickman








James Frey: "Does every dramatic story have a premise? Yes. One and only one premise? Yes. You can't ride two bicycles at the same time and you can't prove two premises at the same time. What if Dickens in 'A Christmas Carol' were also trying to prove that 'crime doesn't pay' along with his premise that 'forced self-examination leads to generosity"? He'd have Scrooge exposed as a crook and punished."










George Bernard Shaw to a young writer: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, 'Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says, 'No,' he will say, 'Well, then, we have to start on the rubbish,' and that's your chance, my boy."










‎"I can only tell you that if you ever see a character starting to breathe, you do not shut him up, you do not sit on him, and you do not ship him out. You stay with him." -Martin Cruz Smith "Gorky Park"








‎"A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry." - J. Barnes








‎"A man will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body—the wishbone." Robert Frost








‎"In summing up the problem of which POV to take, the only way to find out is to try it out first in third person; if you feel you must go into other characters' heads, do it. If you feel you need the intimacy and credibility of first person, try that also. Or, if you feel daring, use all three methods. Remember the first rule of writing...there are no rules." - B. Conrad









‎"The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money." - Karl Marx








‎"Writer's blockl is a self-indulgence invented by authors who want to pretend they are "artists" instead of wage earners. If you want to cure writer's block real fast, just imagine having to give the advance back." - B. Conrad






According to Sinclair Lewis, we writers have a power not given to anyone else: we have the power to bore people long after we are dead!










‎"The writer is not advised to try consciously for special rhythmic effects. He ought, however, to learn to recognize rhythmic defects in his own prose as symptoms of poor or defective arrangement of sentences and sentence elements." Robert Penn Warren and C. Brooks





As a writer, you must find your authentic voice. Your voice is not your writing style. Your voice is your power base as a writer. It is the unique connection you have to the flow of Spirit expresssing through you. Your writing style is the result of the choices you make about the way in which you choose to express that connection. Once you find your authentic voice, your writing style will develop more easily.








‎"If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed...I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published about 300, and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer." - Ray Bradbury






‎"Give readers a book with people they care about, and they will queue up to shake the author's hand." - Norman Cousins











‎"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy—and I keep it in a jar on my desk." - Stephen King on writing horror stories






‎"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." - Robert Frost




‎"Questions to address in plotting:
What are the compulsions?
What are the obstacles?
Is the protagonist active? That is, does he make things happen or is he one to whom things happen?
Is there a time crunch?"
- Oakley Hall











‎"...there's a hormone secreted into the bloodstream of most writers that makes them hate their own work while they are doing it, or immediately after. This, coupled with the chorus of critical reaction from those privileged to take a first look, is almost enough to discourage further work entirely." --Francis Ford Coppola, "Letter to the Reader," Zoetrope magazine








‎"There are no good stories. Only the singer really matters, seldom the song. What a writer brings to any story is an attitude, an attitude usually defined by the wound stripes of life." - John Gregory Dunne






‎"Simple English is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for." - Jacques Barzun