Wisdom from well-known authors can be inspirational for wannabe writers. Or in some cases they can have the opposite effect. Here are some more gems to ponder.
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” – E.L. Doctorow
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” – Stephen King
“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. ” – Agatha Christie
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story within you.” – Maya Angelou
“Read, read, read. Read everything: trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” – William Faulkner
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain
“History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill
“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” – Neil Gaiman
“The first draft of anything is shit.” – Ernest Hemingway (Oh, did I preach this to my writers! Sadly, a number of them did not believe it.)
“I can shake off everything as I write. My sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank
“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best part.” – Charles Dickens
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” – Ray Bradbury
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” – Virginia Woolf
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” – Annie Proulx
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” – Roald Dahl
“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.” – Alice Walker (Truer words were never spoken.)
“Writing is a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” – Graham Greene
I’ll conclude with a personal favorite, once again from the great Ernest Hemingway: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”