Fiction Writers Quotes

• I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Successful, Interesting

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• Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

  Gene Fowler

  Inspirational, Writing, Blood

  Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. "Successful Scientific Writing", p. 53, 2000.

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• Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

  Michael Crichton

  Book, Writing, Done

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Creativity, People

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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Life, Being Alone, Writing

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• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

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• Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

  Alice Munro

  Writing, People, Anecdotes

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Sep 17, 2011

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• Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Individual, Type

  "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: And Other Stories".

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• The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Writing, Artist

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• People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

  Harlan Ellison

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

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• A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

  Joseph Conrad

  Writing, Men, Fellow Man

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• Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

  W. H. Murray

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.

  Toni Morrison

  Block, Writing, Students

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.159, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Doe, Alive

  Ray Bradbury (2015). “Zen in the Art of Writing”, p.8, HarperCollins UK

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• My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Writing, Stories

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• There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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• Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Rejection, Soul

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• Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John W. Campbell

  Home, Editors, Writing And Reading

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• Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

  Pete Hamill

  Writing, World, Heavy

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• Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.

  Colin Greenland

  Sex, Writing, Desire

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• If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

  Irvin S. Cobb

  Writing, Too Much, Good Business

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• The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Character, Land

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