The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink. – T.S. Eliot
Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs. – Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction, 1991
Let’s hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. – Peter S. Prescott
Drink and be filled up. – Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000
The author, as a rule, dearly loves every line of his work, from the first stroke down to the dotlet on the i, and certainly has a right to it. – Gustav Boehm, “A Discourse on Title Page Composition,” in The Inland Printer (Ch
It’s not plagiarism — I’m recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer would do. – Uniek Swain
I really would like to stop working forever—never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now—and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends…. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. – Allen Ginsberg
If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. – Henry Rollins
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. – Franz Kafka
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. – Gustave Flaubert
No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. – Russell Lynes
A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order. – Jean Luc Godard
Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word. – Gail Hamilton
Words were the only net to catch a mood, the only sure weapon against oblivion. – Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? – Joan Didion
Journal: fitting your heart and soul into ruled lines. – Terri Guillemets
[G]usto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves. Moreover, any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. – Marianne Moore (1887–1972), lecture, 1948
Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially. – A. Bronson Alcott
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947
The reason why many people are so fond of using superlatives, is, they are so positive that the poor positive is not half positive enough for them. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers
