It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
– Ernest Hemingway

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
– Willa Cather

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.
– Erica Jong

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
– Barbara Kingsolver

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
– E. L. Doctorow

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
– William Faulkner

Writing is its own reward.
– Henry Miller

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
– Jane Yolen

If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
– Toni Morrison

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
– Isaac Asimov

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
– Stephen King

It is impossible to discourage the real writers — they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
– Sinclair Lewis

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.
– Anonymous

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
– Anne Lamott

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
– Junot Diaz

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.
– Dylan Thomas

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.
– E.B. White

It is no less difficult to write a sentence in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick. So you might as well write Moby Dick.
– Annie Dillard