Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let...

Maybe Laura’s real problem came in admitting this: there was nothing new under the sun. To write a story would be, somehow deep down, to embrace her limits, to admit that, indeed, she would someday...

I find that is the best way to write during emotional scenes…put yourself and your emotions in every single word.-Nina Jean Slack

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn’t build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.

An unedited manuscript is a first draft of story; but is not a finished product. Too many writers study the craft of writing but do not acquire the skills of an editor.

Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.

I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out...

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He...

Writers remember everything…especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent...

i writebecauseit is the only wayi can reach you.

People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

I waited for the seasons of love to pass from this cold winter to the summer heat I dreamed of.

He’d heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

A man may be ‘dated’ in the sense that the forms, the set-up, the paraphernalia, whereby he expresses the matter of permanent interest, are those of a particular age. In that sense the greatest writers...

The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give...

Letting go looks different for everyone, I think. Sometimes it’s as simple as waking up one day and deciding not to let your past rule you. Other times it’s a process; slow moving and painful,...

If words come alive on the page, the writer succeeds in connecting to the reader.

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction.

I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.

That’s why I’m a writer.

That moment you realize you are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Live inside your stories, yes, but do not hide behind them.

A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren’t quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.

Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success.

The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.

Children’s reading and children’s thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have...

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be...

All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides,...

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

Writers leave a trail of magic everywhere they go.

Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader…

Words made you mighty. Words, stories, books: they could take you anywhere, and they could go out anywhere in the world. Jenny — Jane — picked up her pen, and began to write.

When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw...

If you’re frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you’ll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.

Writer’s block’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today.

Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.

Asking a writer why they like to write {in the theoretical sense of the question} is like asking a person why they breathe. For me, writing is a natural reflex to the beauty, the events,...

A hundred years ago, an average teenager knew countless authors, and, a sex position or two. Today, an average teenager knows countless sex positions, and, an author or two.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to...

It’s a phenomenal experience jumping from the devious mind of a sorceress bent on conquering the world to the compassionate musing of a queen capable of healing life with a touch—all in a flicker of...

(the modern writer’s aim is) general revelation by suggestion (and) making a very tiny part do for a whole.

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don’t know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened...

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is every happy anywhere.

Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.

Just write. That’s my only tip. And read. I guess that’s two.

Every writer dreams about the day they can step into their fiction and wander its hallways.