Quotes from Authors - Routledge

Quotes from Authors

(organized by stage of the writing process)

Practicing

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

—William Wordsworth

“I keep the stories enjoyable for my readers by keeping them enjoyable for me.”
—Gordon Korman

“Writing is the inking of our thinking.”

—Robin Fogarty

“Add to the list of topics, in your notebook, anytime you think of something. Then when you sit
down to write, you can just grab a topic from that list and begin.”

—Natalie Goldberg

“Your writing is trying to tell you something. Just lend an ear.”

—Joanne Greenberg

“Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing . . . the rest will follow.”

—Jane Yolen

“Writing to me is a voyage, an odyssey, a discovery, because I’m never certain of precisely what I will
find.”

—Gabriel Fielding

“Free writing about your memories is like traveling in a time machine into your past.”
—Unknown

“I read a lot, which helps me to know how to write as well as what to write about. My best advice for
anyone who would like to be a writer is: Read!!”

—Mem Fox

“The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.”

—William Goldman

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”

—William Faulkner

“And I’m a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That’s the reason it took me 20 years
to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.”

—Shelby Foote

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

Quotes from Authors 1

“I set myself 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind or
if I’m sick or well.”

—Arthur Hailey

“All through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day—even if I’ve got a hangover. You’ve got to
discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.”

—J. G. Ballard

“I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five.”
—Nicholas Sparks

“I have to get into a sort of zone. It has something to do with an inability to concentrate, which is the
absolute bottom line of writing.”

—Stephen Fry

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. 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

“If you want to write, write it. That’s the first rule.”

—Robert Parker

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And
it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as
if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”

—Maya Angelou

“The beautiful part about writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a
brain surgeon.”

—Robert Cormier

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching
infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the
morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”

—Paul Rudnick

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex
overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

—Mark Twain

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us
that dragons can be beaten.”

—G. K. Chesterton

“Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in
which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and track-
ing like predators hunting their prey in the bush.”

—Robert Moss, Dreamgates

“Writing a story is like going down a path in the woods. You follow the path. You don’t worry about
getting lost, you just go.”

—Jan Brett

“Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.”
—Jim Trelease

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

2 Quotes from Authors

Collecting Ideas

“If you breathe, if you live, you have something to write about.”

—Donald Graves

“I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that’s only the first step. Ideas are easy. It’s the execu-
tion of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.”

—Sue Grafton

“In writing, there is first a creating stage—a time you look for ideas, you explore, you cast around
for what you want to say. Like the first phase of building, this creating stage is full of possibilities.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts.”

—Thomas Carlyle

“How to generate writing ideas, things to write about? Whatever’s in front of you is a good
beginning.”

—Natalie Goldberg

“Actually ideas are everywhere. It’s the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a
coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.”

—Fred Saberhagen

“Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be king.”

—Mark Van Doren

“Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copy-
ing out what is already written.”

—Walter Benjamin

“Ideas are like butterflies, you must catch them while you can, or they will fly away and be lost
forever.”

—Joanne Ryder

“I take my ideas from my experiences.”

—Chris Van Allsburg

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

—Linus Pauling

“When critics say a writer is beginning to come into his own, they mean he has finally discovered the
single theme which bulks largest in his intellect, his imagination, and his emotions.”

—Robi Macauley and George Lanning, Technique in Fiction

“We can see from the time we are born. But looking—that’s something else. Looking is walking
through your eyes to a new world.”

—Marcia Brown

“Everybody has something to say, something that is close to his or her heart. It’s a matter of being
courageous enough to put the thoughts and feelings into words.”

—Lulu Delacre

“It’s like a bird-watcher watching for birds: The stories are there, you just have to train yourself to
look for them.”

—Barbara Micheals

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

Quotes from Authors 3

Marinating

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”

—A. Felson

“In writing, there is first a creating stage—a time you look for ideas, you explore, you cast around
for what you want to say. Like the first phase of building, this creating stage is full of possibilities.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“After all these many books, I still over-research.”

—Ann McGovern

“Of course it’s true, but it may not have happened.”

—Patricia Polacco’s grandmother

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”

—Agatha Christie

Drafting

“Quantity produces quality. If you write only a few things, you’re doomed.”

—Ray Bradbury

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing junk and thinking it’s good stuff, and
then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

—Octavia Butler

“I’ve often said that there’s no such thing as writer’s block; the problem is idea block. When I find
myself frozen—whether I’m working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire
book—it’s usually because I’m trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no
place.”

—Jeffery Deaver

“Don’t get it right, just get it written.”

—James Thurber

“I think writer’s block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a
writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come
out.”

—Roy Blount, Jr.

“The beautiful part about writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a
brain surgeon.”

—Robert Cormier

“Lower your standards and keep writing.”

—William Stafford

“One of my goals in writing is to transmit the picture in my head to the reader-the reverse of what I
do when I’m reading. When I’m reading, the picture comes to me.”

—Jerry Spinelli

“People have writer’s block not because they can’t write, but because they despair of writing
eloquently.”

—Anna Quindlen

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

4 Quotes from Authors

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

—Margaret Atwood

“The faster I write the better my output. If I’m going slowly—I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the
words instead of being pulled by them.”

—Raymond Chandler

“One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first para-
graph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily.”

—Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Writing a story is like going down a path in the woods. You follow the path. You don’t worry about
getting lost, you just go.”

—Jan Brett

Revising

“The writer takes the reader’s hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without
ever having to mention those words.”

—Natalie Goldberg

“A metaphor is like a simile.”

—Author unknown

“The pleasure IS the rewriting. The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

“The great thing about revision is that it’s your opportunity to fake being brilliant.”
—Will Shetterly

“Books aren’t written—they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept,
especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

—Michael Crichton

“Good writing is essentially revision. I am positive of this.”

—Roald Dahl

“Voice is the imprint of ourselves in our writing. Take the voice away…and there’s no writing, just
words following words.”

—Donald Graves

“The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing then doing it over. That’s the
thrill of a lifetime for me. . . . I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did it. I
try to make it look like I never touched it, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of sweat.”

—Toni Morrison

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.”
—Anton Chekhov

“Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.”
—From the movie Finding Forrester

“One of my goals in writing is to transmit the picture in my head to the reader—the reverse of what
I do when I’m reading. When I’m reading, the picture comes to me.”

—Jerry Spinelli

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

Quotes from Authors 5

“Half my life is an act of revision.”

—John Irving

“Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall
in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects
of never publishing.”

—Richard North Patterson

“I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their
erasers.”

—Vladimir Nabokov

“The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning
and the lightning bug.”

—Mark Twain

“The most valuable of talents is never using two words when one will do.”

—Thomas Jefferson

“As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn’t seen before.”
—Robert Hayden

“Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of
stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.”

—Edmund Morrison

“Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, and intensify scenes.”
—Richard North Patterson

“Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.”

—Pete Murphy

Sharing

“I am thrilled by children’s reactions to my books. That’s what fuels me to write other books.”
—Marc Brown

“Sometimes you look at your work on the drawing board, and it’s like a battlefield. You are fighting
to get the picture to turn out right.”

—Barbara Cooney

Editing

“I can never seem to start writing a book until I know what the title will be.”
—Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

“Words should be weighed, not counted.”

—Jewish folk saying

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

—Elmore Leonard

“Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”

—Author unknown

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

6 Quotes from Authors

“Before Julia Child mastered the art of French cooking, someone taught her how to fry an egg.”
—Unknown

“We can’t be as good as we’d want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own
badness?”

—Nick Hornby

“This morning I took out a comma, and this afternoon I put it back again.”

—Oscar Wilde

“A good title should be like a metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or obvious.”
—Walker Percy

“A critic can only review the book he has written, not the one which the writer wrote.”
—Mignon McLaughlin

“As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.”

—Mark Twain

“No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.”

—Russell Lynes

Presentation

“The writing process is hard work and I always look forward to drawing the pictures.”
—Marc Brown

“The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the
small fraction of your artwork that soars.”

—David Bayles and Ted Orland, in Art and Fear

“How do you present your papers? As a golden gift on a platter? Or a stinky three day old fish?”
—Donald Murray

“I derive so much pleasure in looking. I hope children will too.”

—Lois Ehlert

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has ever known.”

—Oscar Wilde

“The artist’s only responsibility is his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one….”
—William Faulkner

Miscellaneous

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did
not tell stories.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

“The tale is often wiser than the teller.”

—Susan Fletcher, Shadow Spinner

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

Quotes from Authors 7

“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Some-
times a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”

—Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

“You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it’s going to be too dif-
ficult for grownups, you write it for children.”

—Madeleine L’Engle

“I’m not writing to make anyone’s children feel safe.”

—J. K. Rowling

“In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only
hope, the only refuge.”

—Isaac Bashevis Singer

“‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten, but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever.”
—Philip Pullman, 1996 Carnegie Medal acceptance speech

“It is as easy to dream up a book as it is hard to write one.”

—Balzac

“It does not seem to me that I have the right to foist a story on people, most of whom are children who
should be learning all the time, unless I am learning from it too.”

—Diana Wynne Jones

“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a
story.”

—Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

“I don’t want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children
perform miracles when they read.”

—Astrid Lindgren

“People who don’t have stories in their cultures go nuts.”

—Rafe Martin

“To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.”

—W. H. Auden

“In every generation, children’s books mirror the society from which they arise; children always get
the books their parents deserve.”

—Leonard S. Marcus

“I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time
are those who have given me something to say.”

—Katherine Paterson

“It’s a fair-sized job to write a book that people can be bothered just to read; when they begin to steal
copies, you are really getting some place.”

—Ruth Stout

“Telling the proper stories is as if you were approaching the throne of Heaven in a fiery chariot.”
—Baal Shem Tov, as quoted by Steve Sanfield

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories
it loves and believes in.”

—Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare

“I’m sure there are writers who are great businessmen, but I never met any.”

—Arthur Miller

Reproduced with permission from Morris, Awakening Brilliance in the Writer’s Workshop. Copyright 2012
Routledge. All rights reserved. www.routledge.com

8 Quotes from Authors