Writing Quotes of the Day

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”—Kurt Vonnegut

“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.”— E. B. White

Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of methods will do the job: humor, anecdote, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words.”—William Zinsser

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”—Orson Scott Card

“I don't believe for a moment that creativity is a neurotic symptom. On the contrary, the neurotic who succeeds as an artist has had to overcome a tremendous handicap. He creates in spite of his neurosis, not because of it.”—Jack Kerouac

“Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.”—Harlan Ellison
“In nearly all good fiction, the basic—all but inescapable-—plot form is: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition, and so arrives at a win, lose or draw.”—John Gardner

“Never mistake motion for action.”—Ernest Hemingway

“In a longish life as a professional writer, I have heard a thousand masterpieces talked out over bars, restaurant tables and love seats. I have never seen one of them in print. Books must be written, not talked.”—Morris L. West

“Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”—Rod Serling