Paula > Paula's Quotes

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
― Ray Bradbury

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
― William Faulkner

“You can make anything by writing.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Write what should not be forgotten.”
― Isabel Allende

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I hate writing, I love having written.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It has often been said
there’s so much to be read,
you never can cram
all those words in your head.

So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads.

That's why my belief is
the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh
of the reader's relief is.

And that's why your books
have such power and strength.
You publish with shorth!
(Shorth is better than length.)”
― Dr. Seuss

“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”
― Stephen King

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“It is the tale, not he who tells it.”
― Stephen King

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
― Joan Didion

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.”
― Richard Bach

“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”
― Mark Twain

“Write what you know.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”
― John Steinbeck

“Writing is both mask and unveiling.”
― E.B. White