There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
William Somerset MaughamTo me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.
Truman CapoteThe most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
Joanne K. RowlingSo long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth.
Freedom, JournalismRod SerlingComing up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.
Ideas, InspirationRod SerlingI had at some point the epiphany that if I wanted to be a writer, maybe I should stop thinking about writing, or stop writing about writing, and actually write.
Matt FractionThe thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.
Anne McCaffreyIdeas seem to come from everywhere - my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.
InspirationJudy BlumeYou have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
Children's BooksMadeleine L'EngleI have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.
Khaled HosseiniPoetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.
PoesieEugenio MontaleI try to leave out the parts readers skip.
Elmore LeonardI loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.
WordsAnne RiceWrite what you like; there is no other rule.
O. HenryThe writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
Elia KazanIt may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.
PoemsHoward NemerovIt is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.
Vita Sackville-WestIf there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
BooksToni MorrisonA writer without a pen would be like a duck without water.
DonovanReaders embrace all kinds of characters as long as they are written with emotional truth.
David LevithanLife can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.
Edna FerberTrying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.
Words, LoveDavid Levithan, Will Grayson, Will GraysonYou write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.
Joyce MaynardI didn't choose a word or anything. I just wrote the song until it stopped.
Marty RobbinsMy love songs are very personal and quite weird. They don't really have the big radio hit choruses because basically they're my therapy, stuff I have to get off my chest.
MusicEd SheeranI do have a tendency to walk on the dark side sometimes. I have suffered from depression, I know how that feels, I have an innate inclination that way. Writing does help with that.
DepressionJoanne K. Rowling, September 2012I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
Edgar Allan PoeIn all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
Langston HughesIn my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
Charles BukowskiIf the reader cares, I don't think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.
Barry EislerBy the time you read this letter, these words will be those of the past. The me of now is gone.
LettersFennel HudsonLyrics are coming to you all the time. I get inspiration in the middle of the night.
Rod StewartWriters may be solitary but they also tend to flock together. They like being solitary together.
Solitude & Being AloneNeil GaimanI'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.
Stephen King in 11/22/63Rapping to prove nothing, just writing to say something
Cause I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t rushing to saying nothing
This doesn’t mean I lost my dream
It’s just right now I got a really crazy mind to clean
I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.
ThinkingErnest HemingwayThere is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest HemingwayDoubts startin' to creep in, every day it's just so gray and black
Hope, I just need a ray of that
‘Cause no one sees my vision when I play it for ‘em
They just say it's wack, but they don’t know what dope is
And I don’t know if I was awake or asleep when I wrote this
Word to the wise writer: never underestimate your secondary characters! But watch them... they sneak off with stuff.
StoriesKa HancockI want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.
StoriesKen FollettTwo hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
Roald DahlThe only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.
Books, ReadingCarlos Ruiz Zafón in The Angel's GameA story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.
StoriesCarlos Ruiz Zafón in The Shadow of the Wind