Writing Quotes of the Day

“One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood...I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”—Joyce Carol Oates

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”—Albert Camus

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”—Scott Adams

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.”—Robert Louis Stevenson

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.”—Cyril Connolly

“Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.”—Bonnie Friedman

“Detail is the lifeblood of fiction.”—John Gardner

“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Learning to write may be a part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes from a superior devotion to reading.”—Eudora Welty

“Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.”—T.S. Eliot