Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
Write what should not be forgotten.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
You can fix anything but a blank page.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.
I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
