"I blundered into writing." ~ Ralph Ellison
All literature, is, finally autobiographical. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe. ~ David Hare
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. . . . You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. ~ Doris Lessing
All writing begins in the sea of experience. ~ Barry Lane
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotion. ~ James A. Michener
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
Thinking is the activity I love best and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. ~ Isaac Asimov
In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns. ~ Raymond Chandler
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of. ~ Burt Bacharach
I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it. ~ Susan Orlean, Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup , p. xiii
Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers. ~ Philip Jose Farmer
Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear. ~ John Updike
I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button. ~ Anne Lamott
Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue... I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary. ~ Elmore Leonard, theguardian.com, Feb 19, 2010
In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Paris Review Interviews, II
