"Get black on white." ~ Guy de Maupassant
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one. ~ Paul Valery
Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist. ~ Hunter S. Thompson
As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. ~ Mark Twain
The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. ~ Samuel Johnson
My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see. That--and no more, and it is everything. ~ Joseph Conrad
To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!… On and on and on and on! ~ James Joyce
Writing is simply the writer and the reader on opposite ends of a pencil; they should be as close together as that. ~ Jay R. Gould
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death--fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. ~ Edna Ferber
Don't verb nouns. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague. ~ William Safire
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wadsworth
Writing is a delicious agony. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks
The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by men. ~ Ortega Y Gassett
You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal. ~ James Baldwin
A writer is like a bean plant -- he has his little day, and then gets stringy. ~ E.B. White
Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it. ~ Agatha Christie
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make. ~ Truman Capote
