Top Writers Quotes

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from...

My father once admonished me to master the laws that govern fine writing until I could weave my words into worlds. If ever I accomplish that feat, I will sign my name to the tale.

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.This is not quite true, i...

Stories have the ability to take us inside all kinds of life.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

We all perform balancing acts between self and family, individual and community, private desire and group expectation. Gay people in particular must break with the groupthink of church and society in...

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for...

If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense tha...

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what we...

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once,...

It is my personal belief that writing cannot be taught.

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

Writers Block? Get out and have fun. Love yourself. No use frowning and buying anti-wrinkle cream after.

It's a big world for the idiots. If you're a writer, there are not many cities where you can go and feel normal.

...so I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside it's like lodestones inside you and sooner or later you come near something that you're supposed to...