All Quotes By Tag: On-writing

“And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.”

“Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: ‘My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, “The Cookiepants Hypotenuse.”‘ Or else they get unbearably cutesy: ‘My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn’t oo, squeezums?”

“You think it’s creative… I only feel like being insane.”

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”

“Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ”

“I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.”

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”

“A good book isn’t written, it’s rewritten.”

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”