For Writers Quotes

I think it's essential for writers to be involved in the recording process as things can often go wrong in this area. Voice actors are all too often presented with a wad of XL sheets, no proper character notes, context or reference and are just expected to perform. ~ Rhianna Pratchett

It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan. ~ Richard Curtis

Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut. ~ Campbell Scott

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories. ~ Don Roff

Cure for writer's block: blow something up(in the story) ~ Scott Westerfeld

It takes awhile for writers to get to know actors rhythms, not just as actors, but what they bring to the characters. I think it takes a few episodes for the writing room to catch up to the actors and vice versa. ~ Logan Marshall-Green

I think readers appreciate those of us who stay in the trenches and fight the good fight even when times get tough. I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror. As far as I'm concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that's the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work. ~ Bentley Little

I just have a thing for writers. Maybe it because I'm just so not a writer. ~ Patricia Clarkson

Books about books are a rare species, special tomes for writers and book lovers. More than an affirmation of taste, a book about books is often a spirited celebration and sincere investigation. Quickly coveted, it remains on that particular shelf, guarded and revered, and eventually slips out of print. What good company we will keep then, among a library lost, only momentarily invisible, waiting patiently to be found. ~ Tom Cardamone

You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you. ~ Anais Nin

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves. ~ Mohsin Hamid

I have great respect for writers who are humble, whose language allows the reader to see the story but doesn't get in the way. Language is a window, and if the window is clean, you shouldn't be aware you're looking through glass. ~ Jennifer Haigh

Scrivener is where I live. I'm planning the next novel, two screenplays and a couple of short stories with it and it's amazing how fluid the software makes the process. I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

It's our decisions, not our conditions, that ultimately shape the quality of our lives. ~ Derric Yuh Ndim

The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot. ~ James Wolcott

our value/belief system acts as a
conditioning factor for our thinking pattern. ~ Derric Yuh Ndim

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves. ~ Darynda Jones

Having a support system is huge for writers. My parents were always encouraging and told me they were behind me, whether or not I made it in the business. My wife was always there for my successes and failures. ~ Stephen J. Cannell

Research is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING ~ Rayne Hall

My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Write for the love of storytelling, not the acclaim. ~ Airam

Every day you make certain decisions and take specific actions that come about as a result of how you think, feel and the habits you tend to indulge ~ Derric Yuh Ndim

I do think Austin is a great town for writers; we have a lot of them here. But I grew up in Austin, and so I didn't move here because it was a creative mecca; I was just lucky to live here. ~ Jeff Abbott

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword. ~ Max Hawthorne

The mind of an artist never sleeps, because dreaming is when they do their best work. ~ Mark W. Boyer

There's a difference between story and side-story. Sometimes you have to write whatever's in your head, then determine which is which. ~ Khrys Vaughan

Our perceptions of reality are only a relationship to what is actually out there. Perceptions are influenced by context, by previous life experience, and by our tendency to seek out
evidence to confirm our expectations. This drive to confirm, as
argued by social physiologists, results in what is known as self fulfilling prophecy. ~ Derric Yuh Ndim

A good exercise session leaves an athlete person gasping for air, sweating, and exhausted, and so is writing and drawing for writers and artists, but the brain is what pants and feels exhaustion.
Writing and drawing are a great mental effort that equals tiring physical training.
When you write and draw, you need to use all your brain muscles to transfer your ideas into the paper. Concentration, knowledge, experience, creativity, imagination, all unite, trying hard to finish a text or an art piece. ~ Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

Howard University holds something called "Heart's Day," an all day ceremony in which a writer is honored. I was the recipient of this honor. It's a wonderful ceremony that Eleanor Traylor chair of English at Howard University organizes for writers. Writers from around the country came to pay tribute to my work. It was very flattering. ~ Ishmael Reed

Science fiction offers an intensely bracing angle of view for writers to adopt, especially in a time of constant innovation and crisis, and it is a scandal that in 1999 so many writers have written it and continue to write it in obscurity. ~ John Clute

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The cure for writer's block is writer's cramp. ~ Inigo DeLeon

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives. ~ Scott Adsit

I write every day, including weekends. For writers, there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them. ~ Janet Fitch

I'm always impressed when seeing how much admiration people show for writers that died centuries ago, and as much as I am shocked when they totally ignore me, right in front of them. ~ Robin Sacredfire

You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it. ~ Tom Winton

Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion. ~ William Strunk Jr.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality. ~ Iris Chang

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play. ~ Sloane Crosley

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can't polish what you haven't written.

Things that made for a normal life - like a daily routine that followed the sun - took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn't a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep.

He would often awake with a new idea - as if he'd merely been on a break and not unconscious - and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot's seat in a ship that could go anywhere. ~ Vincent H. O'Neil

My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write. ~ Gabriel Fielding

Then I realized that I was falling victim to one of the fallacies of the bad reviewer (whose habits we already discussed at length in yesterday's commentary). I was wishing that Hamid had written a different book than he had. How I might have written this story is completely irrelevant. It would be like dismissing The Godfather because I wished it were a musical. The novel needs to be considered on its own terms. ~ Kevin Guilfoile

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post. ~ Cyril Connolly

The Shield made me realize there were great opportunities for writers in TV. ~ Nick Antosca

Well, I definitely advise anyone who wants to write, write. Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't. Because a lot of people can be very discouraging to people who say they want to be a professional writer. If you want to do it, then chase it. Chase your dreams. Follow your heart. If that's what you want, go after it. Write it out. You never know, you could be the next big thing. ~ Helena Lancaster

It's difficult for writers in the theatre. It's difficult for writers in the theatre. ~ Donna McKechnie

. . .In a heartbeat, you will fall right into that novel, that poem, the story that you are most in love with right now. When you learn to be able to decide in the moment to take breaks from your internal voices - even though it's only for a split second - you will be taking your first baby steps toward the full-out exhilaration of living in the midst of the wholly realized writer's life.

Then all the negatives - yes, even your cherished writer's block ego trip - will fade into background noise, then you will find silence, and your story will take over. Before you know it, you will be working calmly and clearly for hours, rather than for a couple minutes.

1 hour, not 1 second, 2 hours, not 2 seconds, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours of allowing your mind to come to rest from the horrid, every day, mental chatter we lock ourselves up with - a time to anchor within the natural spaciousness that you already know instinctively, know from deep within will make you feel full inside. . . . ~ Terry Kennedy

Eating and sleeping are the two periods in your life where writers get a pass for not reading. Check that.
Only sleeping. ~ Ted Bell

[G]ive nothing centrality, because writing is about continually shifting weight from one thing and moment to the other. ~ Amit Chaudhuri

It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life. ~ Noah Hawley

I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak ... to travel ... to experience the world. And memorialize it. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

With two books a year, I don't have time for writer's block. ~ James Rollins

People have told me, "Go write your book," and I said, "OK. ~ Millicent Ashby

My business is to be talented, that is, to be capable of selecting the important moments from the trivial ones ... It's about time for writers - particularly those who are genuine artists - to recognize that in this world you cannot figure out everything. Just have a writer who the crowds trust be courageous enough and declare that he does not understand everything, and that alone will represent a major contribution to the way people think, a long leap forward. ~ Anton Chekhov

It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to. ~ Sara Sheridan

Sometimes to write you need to do more than just appear at your desk-you need to take care of the part of you that dreams and imagines and creates. Reading can usually do this for writers, but sometimes you also need to watch films, listen to music, go to an art museum, or see a play. Or just sit outside and soak up the sky. ~ Barbara Abercrombie

While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme. ~ Damon Galgut

The innumerable worlds in the Milky Way, words. ~ Jack Kerouac

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story ~ Richard Yates

For writers, handing a manuscript off to an editor is like walking into a parole hearing. You've done the time but wonder if it's going to satisfy the judge. ~ Shandy L. Kurth

Being a writer is determined more by writing than by having written. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness. ~ Umberto Eco

Even the longest book is read and was written one word at a time. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What to do Before Your Book Launch is the new invaluable tool for writers. There is so much to know and now it's all in one place. ~ Julie Klam

It's masturbation for writers to be able to write this absolutely outrageous personality, in a character that you somehow agree with, part of the time, at least. ~ Rie Rasmussen

Don't let your ego write checks your character can't cash.
another from the world of tweets ~ Robin Glasser

The blog is certainly another tool for writers out there to break their way in. But being a blogger does not make you a great writer. ~ Julie Powell

You cannot keep something down that is bound to rise. ~ Juliet C. Obodo

Remember this: a simple pen is much more swift and much more precise than a camera. That's my advice to both beginning and experienced authors: don't write with a camera. A camera is slow. All these modern writers usually make the same mistake - they write books with a film in mind. When you read their works, you don't hear the voice of a real author, you hear that horribly cheesy Hollywood voice-over. Frankly, that's not a novel, it's a movie script. If you write books, use a pen. A pen is swift, it has tempo, you can kill people with it. You cannot kill people with a camera, you can only perhaps bore them to death with it. ~ Martijn Benders

I have a tremendous respect for writers who scribble away their torments, and their passions into plays. ~ Rob Urbinati

My advice to writers is this:
Walk, talk, breathe, laugh, cry, fall, rise, fail, succeed, run, jump, love, hate, hide, seek, learn, work, play, feel, LIVE.
Then write it down. ~ S. Alex Martin

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance. ~ Dan Greenburg

Don't try to describe an orgasm if you've never had one. ~ Marty Rubin

For writers from working-class families, the making of art is cultural disenfranchisement, for we do not belong in literary circles and our writing rarely makes it back home. ~ Valerie Miner

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked up to. Young and upcoming poets must approach their craft with an almost angelic perspective. So many writers are missing a condensed fusion in their writing, they condescend to their audience, the truth is not spoken in their work, they gabble, their words seem to make a hot fuss on the page. What do they gain? They gain this, simply nothing. Poets must assemble and present their work accordingly to how they see fit and should be careful of advice from other writers and editors. Sometimes there can be too much going on in the words that are meant to be given with the best of intentions. ~ Abigail George

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears
I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block. ~ Irving Stone

For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience – the rest is observation ~ Graham Greene

The three rules to writing a novel;

1) Write
2) Write more
3) Keep writing ~ Sci Furz

I think it's fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we're unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we're witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure. ~ Scott Lynch

It's also not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. ~ Paul McCartney

I never went to college - I don't believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated and too snobbish and too intellectual, and the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth - who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I've had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads "Don't think!" You must never think at the typewriter - you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. ~ Ray Bradbury

Read a ton, write every day if you can, and don't mimic another writer's style. Find your own voice. ~ James Patterson

The words that come out of your imagination are your own - just be sure they are. ~ Rusty Blackwood

The academy is an incredibly sheltered world, and I do think it's important for writers to get out from under that shelter, at least for a while, to see what the world looks like from outside it. ~ Garth Greenwell

A story should be like a river, flowing and never stopping, your readers passengers on a boat, whirling downstream through constantly refreshing and changing scemery. ~ Ray Bradbury

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that. ~ Saul Bellow

I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking ... just letting things sift and settle, come to you. ~ Ben Fountain

I found this quote for writers on Twitter:
There is a fine line between confidence and delusional thought; cross it.
Don't know who wrote it but thought it was interesting. ~ Robin Glasser

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single. ~ James Lee Burke

In my opinion, it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as the existence of God, pessimism, etc. The job of the artist is only to record who under which circumstances said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist must not judge his characters or their words; he must only be an impartial witness ... It is high time for writers - and especially for true artists - to admit that it is impossible to explain anything ... if an artist whom the crowd trusts admits that he understands nothing of what he sees, this fact alone will make a great contribution to the realm of thought and will mark a great step forward. ~ Anton Chekhov

To be a better cook, cook more. To be a better writer, read more. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Many of us would not make terribly interesting characters in a novel. ~ Claire Wingfield

Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free of tuition. (from Workbook) ~ Steven Heighton

Reading for writers is like training for athletes. ~ Linda Sue Park

Like a Rubik's Cube, I have many configurations; Do not just assume that you have "figured" me out, just because you've seen one side. ~ Andrea L'Artiste

I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works. Judd Apatow is fantastic at it. But as an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written. ~ Aaron Sorkin

An excellent precept for writers: Have a clear idea of all the phrases and expressions you need, and you will find them. ~ Ximenes Doudan

This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are. ~ Terry Brooks

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice. ~ Darynda Jones