Story Writing Quotes

• 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

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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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• 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.

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

  Jack London

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Jack London (2015). “Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer”, p.5, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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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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• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Insightful, Story Writers

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• Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Writing, Story Writers, Details

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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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• 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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• 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, Story Writers

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• 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

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• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Positive, Badass

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

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Story Writers, Details

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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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• 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

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• 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

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• I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Swings, Emotion

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

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• After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

  Philip Pullman

  Book, Writing, Mind

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