The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.Walter Bagehot

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. Lord Byron

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Truman Capote

The pen is the tongue of the mind. Miguel de Cervantes

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. Winston Churchill

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. Cicero

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. William Faulkner

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. Benjamin Franklin

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. Kahlil Gibran

If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. Goethe

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector. Ernest Hemingway

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. Ernest Hemingway

Keep in mind that the person to write for is yourself. Tell the story that you most desperately want to read. Susan Isaacs

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King

Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. Anaïs Nin

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. E.L. Doctorow

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Ernest Hemingway

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Charles Peguy

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. Elmore Leonard

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Ernest Hemingway

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. Mark Twain

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. Francis Bacon

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. Flannery O'Connor

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. Joan Baez

Every writer I know has trouble writing. Joseph Heller

An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. Juvenal

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. Don Marquis

As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out. Mark Twain

As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. Virginia Woolf

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. Norman Mailer

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? Friedrich Nietzsche

True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. Alexander Pope

Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life. James Norman Hall

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world. G.K. Chesterton

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. Van Wyck Brooks

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. Samuel Johnson

The best style is the style you don't notice. Somerset Maugham

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. William Makepeace Thackeray

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. Goethe