“I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”
—Roald Dahl
“The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.”
—Robert Benchley
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
—Virginia Woolf
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
—Samuel Johnson
“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”
—Larry L. King
“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”
—Doris Lessing
“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.”
—Jim Tully
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
—Robert A. Heinlein
“I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”
—William Carlos Williams
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
—Elmore Leonard
“When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.”
—Margaret Laurence
“I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.”
—Patrick Dennis
“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. … Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”
—William Zinsser
