Story Writers Quotes

• The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

  Leo Rosten

  Writing, Helping, Reason

  9 Copy quote

• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Odds, Stories

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Real Talk, Three

  44 Copy quote

• Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Long, Insightful

  Letter to Harrison Blake, 16 Nov. 1857 See Pascal 1; Woodrow Wilson 25

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  75 Copy quote

• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.13, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  92 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Moving On, Powerful

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Feb 14, 2013

  130 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Life, Sad, Writing

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Happiness, Attitude

  135 Copy quote

• Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Together, Using Words

  13 Copy quote

• To survive, you must tell stories.

  Umberto Eco

  Stories

  Umberto Eco (2006). “The Island of the Day Before”, p.221, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

  17 Copy quote

• You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

  Larry Niven

  Writing, Stories, Novel

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  36 Copy quote

• Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Details, Stories

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  32 Copy quote

• The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.198, Grove Press

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Keys, Needs

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  45 Copy quote

• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Character, Passion

  34 Copy quote

• Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

  William Wordsworth

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Ernest De Selincourt, Alan G. Hill, Chester Linn Shaver (1967). “The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Volume VIII. A Supplement of New Letters”, p.51, Oxford University Press on Demand

  116 Copy quote

  Show source