c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay hands on everything they can get.
— Napoléon Bonaparte
Why me?” I secreted into her ear.“You were the only one I saw,” she whispered back, making my heart burst.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
Generally, people need less than a quarter of what they want.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Much wants more and loses all.
— Aesop, Aesop's Fables
In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
The fact that they viewed their wealth as a result of their own hands, without any honor other than lip service being given to the god that had blessed them, gave perfect openings to the liars slithering up their legs.
— Lee  Goff, A Rage Like Thunder
Descending the endless stairs for the sixth time, Mr. Lecky thought of all the goods those closed doors hid. Fantastic was the discouragement it caused him. Aware of such variety and great quantity, Mr. Lecky saw the danger of forgetting or never even imagining things which, discovered, he would want. Everlastingly midway between two equal errors, to which could he cleave? To have time for everything, one must make haste. To gain access to everything, one must be patient.Moreover, hasty, or patient as Job, with what great labor would Mr. Lecky carry up on his back all he got! Making, as he was every moment, the climb back longer, giving, as he did with each step down, consent to toil more and more severe, he could anticipate vaguely and abhor another possibility. Curious and insubstantial as his fearing not to find what he could not think of, was his resentment of a perhaps coming time when he might, in revolt against the inanity of exertion, live meanly and miserably, with no object but somehow to make what was already at hand suffice for him. Against this insidious ill chance there exists no defense, since so often what today is detested will appear tomorrow - though surely still detestable - good and wise.
— James Gould Cozzens, Castaway
The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.
— W.K. Marriott, The Prince
Sometimes in life, as in literature, people get their just desserts. The greedy man loses everything because he cannot resist seeking more riches.
— Elise Blackwell, Hunger
Fidelity surveyed a group with at least $1 million investment assets excluding real estate and retirement. 42% of them did not FEEL wealthy.
— Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
Didn’t we all grow up understanding that bribes and payoffs - - by whatever name or rationale - - were bad. And that people were supposed to be the focal point of society, not money?
— Ray Bourhis, Revolt: The Secession of Mill Valley
Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallet?
— Stephen King, Needful Things
I can’t do that,” he said, exhaling sharply and staring out the glass into the street.“Why not?”His face softened. “I need his money.”Spencer looked at me and I couldn’t help but stare back. We were all in the same boat, prisoners to GREED.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
If you took everything I’d ever found hot in a girl and piled them into a corner, you’d get Cricket Hunt standing in a corner.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
I thought back to all the times I’d slept with a girl and not thought twice about it and my gut ached. If a girl doesn’t safeguard herself, who will? I’d always had the mentality that men will change when women change but I never thought about how safeguarding the girls around me was just as much my responsibility as it was theirs.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
I followed suit, a little bit nervous, and very unaware of what I was supposed to do. I had that same sensation you get when you were new to a school and had no idea who anyone was in your lunch period. You’d take your lunch tray and sort of stand around for a moment looking for a good spot to take a seat but the entire time you’re searching, all you can feel is everyone’s eyes on you. That’s a shitty feeling.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
I started toward the barn and was grateful that the wind was still. About halfway up the drive, my heart began to beat an irregular rhythm as I caught sight of Cricket coming toward me. My breath caught in my throat. This girl. This tiny little girl had such incredible power over me with her big, blue, round, sad eyes. Her unusual face, her unusually striking face. Her pert nose. The faint laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. And I didn’t know her, didn’t really even know if she and I were anything alike but that didn’t stop me from wishing we shared a future...even if she did belong to someone else.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
I ran up the stairs, shedding pieces of my suit as I went, determined for a shower, resolute in washing away what I’d just done, who I really was but I was certain there was nothing that could cleanse me, to launder my poisoned blood. This was who I was. Hopeless personified.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
In fifteen hundred years someone will figure out a way to squeeze black juice out of the yellow sand, and that will get everyone very excited. Some people who were rich already will get a lot richer, and some people who were poor will be told that they're richer but will be pretty sure they're not.
— Louise Carey, The Steel Seraglio
August said you row?” she asked. Her voice spilled over me like warm syrup. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the drugging sensation then realized she’d asked me a question.“Yeah,” I answered belatedly. Good. A short answer but it’s better than mouth diarrhea. “I row...a-uh-boat...with-uh-my teammates.” Superb! Just-uh-superb.
— Fisher Amelie, Greed
The world is old and full of lessons. We will not lack for examples. We only have to look around carefully, earnestly, so we can learn and realize that success, to be genuine, must not be propelled by greed.
— Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
Now there was great rejoicing at the rumor of Alderic's quest, for all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that he would succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in the cities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men in Alderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, who feared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also because men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains that bound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to the moon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged. There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied their hoard.("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins")
— Lord Dunsany, Monster Mix
A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for?
— H.M. Forester
CREEPOther people have written about war. About how one plane sweeps over and the whole place is ablaze in minutes. About how a young man may kill another young many with perfect legality. I prefer to write about less sudden things. About how we inch further away without even noticing. And then it's too late. Or is it? No it's not too late to say sorry, we were wrong, let's try again to get along. No, it's not too late to quit lying, halt the greed, stop polluting air earth and seas. I prefer to write about less noisy things. About change happening so gradually that one day you just accept the world as different. And you don't question because you're old, and you don't feel like making waves, and anyway, they'd say you were insane.......
— Jay Woodman, SPAN
Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little
— Epicurus
All right people, listen up! If you've got a family back home waiting for you or if you just want to save your own skin, turn around and walk away. Also, women! I have no intention of fighting any women!
— Hiromu Arakawa
Instead of loving people and using money, people often love money and use people.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to general misery.
— P.N. Elrod, Dark and Stormy Knights
There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.
— Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.
— Mark Twain, The Gilded Age
I did NOT have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.
— Imelda Marcos
The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I’m kidding. But killing helps.
— Douglas Coupland, JPod
Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.
— Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity
I liked this rich lifestyle, but I loved the poor lifestyle better. The less money people had, the less greedy they seemed to be. The people who lived around our flocks seemed to always love everyone around them. Even though they aren’t always happy and can’t always afford the bills, they are still glad to be alive.
— Shannon A. Thompson, November Snow
Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to find a world which was at peace with itself. No matter how always those few wanted more than others. Those not satisfied with running their own lives but wishing to have power over the lives of the others. Greedy people. Greedy for wealth, or power or both.
— Garry Douglas Kilworth, The Wizard Of Woodworld
Brad Green, almost overnight, became the poster boy for the common Wall Street tale - proving once again that greed, most definitely, kills. Giving away about 99% of his fortune was also front page news, but Green barely blinked at having to scrape by with only $200 million. The government seized all five of his homes, his three boats, two jets, a helicopter, 14 cars, and all of his assets except the $200 million he stashed for a rainy day in an offshore bank account.
— Phil Wohl, Organic Nation
The pain and shame felt are unknown to those with planned vacations. They know not of the tsunami that rescinded the homes, goals, and hopes of its victims—swallowed by the sea of greed.
— John-Talmage Mathis, For the (Soon) Unemployed: You Against Them
Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
— Plato, Phaedo
The greedy bastard, thought Weintî. He knows perfectly well that twenty shekels is the going rate for a female household slave of my age.
— Betty   Cross, Mistress of the Topaz
Pah…commoners, traders." Ergus made a disparaging gesture.Traders with money, Ergus. Money they put at the disposition of young Tanahkos," Lmachdan said in a dry tone. "Money that turns into soldiers. Soldiers who are used to extort tribute from us. Tribute that is turned into more soldiers. The warlord has a good thing going, I'll say that for him.
— Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Hands - Part 2: Castling
We are all born to love people and use things. Unfortunately, we grow to love things and use people...
— T. Rafael Cimino
It does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Whatever worldly thing we may covet - zealously striving to obtain and then retain - never seems to bring an end to our desires. Covetousness, envy, jealousy, and greed always escalate into a vicious spiral, as we seek greater and greater gratification but find less and less contentment. . . . Striving to acquire the things of the world not only does not bring lasting happiness and peace, but it drives us to seek more. When "all we've ever wanted" is grounded in the temporal trappings of this world, it is never enough!
— Brent Top
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
— Mark Twain
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.Tarantino - you can criticize everything that Quentin does - but nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is, and that was actually the thing that people responded to - they’re going ‘this is an individual writing with his own point of view’.There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.
— Neil Gaiman
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
— Edgar Allan Poe
Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial OrderRule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the MarketRule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold
— Robert A. Heinlein
Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.
— Terry Pratchett
It's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go. You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it...You have to let people see what you wrote.
— Tina Fey, Bossypants
It's okay to write crap. Just don't try publishing it while it's still crap.
— S.M. Blooding
The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.
— David Nicholls, One Day
People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.
— Toni Morrison
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
— Raymond Chandler
If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.
— Richard Rhodes
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.
— Ernest Hemingway
Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the 
— Will Self
about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.
— Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway on Writing
Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emily—comparatively good, that is—and all the rest balderdash—balderdash, Emily.""I—suppose so," said Emily faintly.Her eyes brimmed with tears—her lips quivered. She could not help it. Pride was hopelessly submerged in the bitterness of her disappointment. She felt exactly like a candle that somebody had blown out."What are you crying for? demanded Mr. Carpenter.Emily blinked away tears and tried to laugh."I—I'm sorry—you think it's no good—" she said.Mr. Carpenter gave the desk a mighty thump."No good! Didn't I tell you there were ten good lines? Jade, for ten righteous men Sodom had been spared.""Do you mean—that—after all—" The candle was being relighted again."Of course, I mean. If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at twenty you'll write ten times ten—if the gods are kind. Stop messing over months, though—and don't imagine you're a genius, either, if you have written ten decent lines. I think there's something trying to speak through you—but you'll have to make yourself a fit instrument for it. You've got to work hard and sacrifice—by gad, girl, you've chosen a jealous goddess. And she never lets her votaries go—not even when she shuts her ears forever to their plea.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon
There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.
— Samuel Beckett
From my writer's workshop, "Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!
— Heather Burch
No good story is quite true.
— Leslie Stephen
Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.
— Ernest Hemingway
It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.
— Stephen King
Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
— Neil Gaiman
Nouns and verbs are the guts of the language. Beware of covering up with adjectives and adverbs.
— A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
— Stephen King
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story … to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.
— Stephen King
You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New York, spills peanuts all over the place (back when the cheapskate airlines at least gave you peanuts), and tells you about what his boss did to him the day before. You know how your eyes glaze over when you hear a story like that? That’s because of the way he’s telling his story. You need a good way to tell your story.
— Adair Lara, Naked, Drunk and Writing
Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought of dissecting their mental and moral natures. Our feelings, you must remember, are far more complex than all that. In real life every act is theresultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and theseyou must study, each by itself, if you would create a livingcharacter. 'But,' you will say, 'in order to note these fleetingthoughts one must know them, must be able to follow them in their capricious meanderings.You have simply to make use of hypnotism, electrical or human, which gives one a two-fold being, setting free the witness-personality so that it may see, understand, and remember the reasons which determine the personality that acts.
— Jules Verne, In the Year 2889
Life is not a submarine.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
. . . But then you will want to put that {publication} behind you right away. You will want to recover the obscurity you swim best through. You've got eternal youth there. You'll never be satisfied. If you get lucky, it will be a darkness so pure it will mirror not the 'self,' but the mysterious 'other.
— Louis B. Jones
I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read booksand stories by bood writers. It's a hard thing to preach about. As Thelonious Monk once said abouthis field, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
— Maureen Dowd
On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.
— Penelope Fitzgerald
People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.
— Greg  Curtis
In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, you're halfway home.
— Len Wein
Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.
— Maxwell Perkins
Good writing demands self-discipline and constant learning
— Cecil Murphey, Writer to Writer: Lessons from a Lifetime of Learning
Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing.
— William Faulkner
But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long words that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb. every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what-these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.
— William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flowers that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write.
— Eduardo Galeano
Make your heroes ambitious, always looking for more success and uniqueness.To write the best story you can, think of making your hero, or heroes, have an ambitious for an unlimited success.-How to write the best story-
— Maryam Abdullah Alnaymi, How to be a Story Writer: A guide to successful story writing for all ages
Deal with your readers that theyare smart, and write a language thatsuits their intelligence.- How to write the best story-
— Maryam Abdullah Alnaymi, How to be a Story Writer: A guide to successful story writing for all ages
Choose noble goals for your heroes.Make them Sympathize with the poor, collaborates on the good goals, always step forward for the good actions, the first ones to do the right things, care to reserve others rights, and respect the laws, traditions and values.
— Maryam Abdullah Alnaymi, How to be a Story Writer: A guide to successful story writing for all ages
One expert may be as good as another until one writes a book
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.
— John Steinbeck
T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-criticism & continual practice. And that is by reading other poetry aloud – and it doesn’t matter whether he understands it or not (i.e. even if it’s in another language.) What matters above all, is educating the ear.' What matters, is to connect your own voice with an infinite range of verbal cadences & sequences – and only endless actual experience of your ear can store all that in your nervous system. The rest can be left to your life & your character.
— Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes
Publish. Be damned. Repeat.
— Tassa Desalada
The most basic rule of editing is that if you can’t bear to read it, no one else can either. So when you find yourself skimming, commit murder.
— Marion Roach Smith, The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life
Writing a full length novel is very much like driving a car with snakes in your pants—you just never know what’s going to happen. -- James Scott Bell
— Sue Ward Drake, Hear No Evil
Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job.
— Ernest Hemingway
You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
— Susan Orlean
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
— Zadie Smith
Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what they do is to stir up, to lance the reader.
— Edna O'Brien
I do a lot of rewriting. It’s very painful.
— James Baldwin
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
— Jim Jarmuscdh
Writer's block, for me, is merely a way of saying "I'm too lazy to sit down and give it the proper time."  I want to be a progressive writer, not a lazy one.
— Olivia Majors
A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.
— Arthur Miller
Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline.
— Andre Dubus
What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening.
— Truman Capote
Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.
— Shel Silverstein
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like all-embracing compassion.
— Arnold Bennett
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.
— Jennifer Egan
Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay
— Susan Sontag
[G]ive nothing centrality, because writing is about continually shifting weight from one thing and moment to the other.
— Amit Chaudhuri
Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.
— Leslie Gordon Barnard
Write about only three things: what you love, what you hate, and what you’re deeply conflicted about.
— Marlon James
I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings
— Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections: On the Magic of Writing
The size of your audience is more important than the size of your book
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.
— Graham Greene
Storytelling is in our DNA. It's what differentiates humans from other species: we don't just communicate information. We tell stories.
— Gabriela Pereira
What is writing but an expression of my own life?
— Zane Grey
Write at the edges of the day.
— Toni Morrison
Authorpreneurship is the businesses side of writing
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
If you wanna be a writer, you must learn to paint a picture with words.
— Brian Jacques
Keep trying, especially at first. It can be very discouraging if your submissions keep being rejected by a publisher, but if your work is what people want to read, you should get there eventually!
— Robin Jarvis
The unwritten novel has a basilisk’s stare.
— China Miéville
There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Something is happening everywhere. You just have to find the story in it.
— Daryl Farmer
Let your emotions guide your hand to the paper and watch how your sorrows can turn into beauty. For tears relieve your body but writing relieves your heart.
— Raneem Kayyali
Don’t write like your mentors
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!
— Stephen King
Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.
— Etty Hillesum
There's no rule for better writing. It's best to make your own rules, and see what works best for you.
— Tarang Sinha
I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.
— Stephen King, Misery
A clever trick does not a concept make.
— Larry Brooks, Story Engineering: Character Development, Story Concept, Scene Construction
Remember: Bad timing equals great plot twists.
— A.L. Mabry
You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.
— Anne Lamott
Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately.
— James D. Beers
Act one: put your characters in a tree. Act two: throw rocks at them. Act three: get them down again.
— Anonymous
Remember...Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don’t worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don’t make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don’t stop. Don’t question. Don’t quit. Don’t stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer’s block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up.
— Bob Thurber
I usually end have one outrageous minor character. He or she says the stuff I wish I had said in real life. Readers will love that character.
— Dan Alatorre
I was always taught to write the book you want to read. It's a philosophy I haven't wavered from since.
— E.A. de Graaf, The Slaver's Bane
If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.
— Henry Miller
Cutting words can cut your readers but if the intention is pure, the story will resonate loud and true.
— Veronica Purcell
Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.
— Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
Writers need to be open to trying new things. My first bestseller was a cookbook, and from that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly.
— Dan Alatorre
Don't have every dialog go in a straight line to solve the problem. Let your characters argue, be sarcastic, disagree or joke around.
— Dan Alatorre
The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation.
— Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Read. Write. Read some more. Explore the universe through your writing. Practice and learn what moves you and what doesn't.
— Darynda Jones
I think if a writer is being honest they’d admit to a file full of a dozen or more stories that are all started to varying degrees. They’re like the kid who wants to be a firefighter and a police officer and an astronaut.
— Dan Alatorre
WHILE writing, just try to have fun with your ms. Enjoy the process, but push on. Always push toward the finish line!
— Darynda Jones
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, About Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, Poetry, and Essays
Writing is a solitary endeavor, being an author is not.
— Karen A. Chase
Any time a beloved character is killed off, it affects the audience in a very powerful way, especially in a series.
— Darynda Jones
I've been rejected a hundred times. It just takes that one person who totally believes in you!
— Darynda Jones
I think the first draft is so challenging because that elusive BALANCE is so challenging.
— Darynda Jones
Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer’s block.
— Dan Alatorre
The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you’ll catch.
— Dan Alatorre
What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee’s. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.
— Dan Alatorre
Don’t listen to any advice from anybody who has fewer published bestsellers than you, or anybody with more bestsellers than you. Or anybody with the exact same number of bestsellers as you. Don’t listen to any advice at all, even this advice I’m telling you right now.
— Dan Alatorre
Here’s my advice: you hold in your heart everything you need to know to write anything your story needs written. Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar and people will smell it. People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.
— Dan Alatorre
You need an interesting voice. A grabber opening is great, compelling characters are awesome, but the voice – your unique voice – is what carries your story. Find your voice. Own your voice. Learn to tell interesting stories using your unique voice. That is the key.
— Dan Alatorre
In the book (Savvy Stories) you see some very real, very personal moments. The first week of Savvy’s life was the longest week of ours. We spent five days in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) worrying that our newborn daughter might die. It was touch and go for a while, and it was extremely difficult to write about. Chapter two gets a lot of people crying. But because we put that honesty out there, readers said “Okay, I can trust this guy.” Then they were better able to laugh with us, too.
— Dan Alatorre
Fresh writing and an original twist on an old idea. As much as this term is hated in the industry, it doesn't make it any less true. High concept. Simply put, you take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly fresh writing! Keep it clean, simple, and compelling.
— Darynda Jones
Screw the beaten path! Do your thing. Write the best story you can. the rest will fall into place.
— Darynda Jones
I made a decision long ago not to make any apologies. Romance rocks, and even though my books don't actually fall into the romance genre, I tout them as very much being about the romance. It's fun. We're all obsessed with it. And it's human nature. Remember, NO APOLOGIES! Write what 's in your heart!
— Darynda Jones
You take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly fresh writing! Keep it clean, simple, and compelling.
— Darynda Jones
ALWAYS hook a reader. If a detail is unnecessary, it doesn't belong in your work, long or short! Make everything intriguing. If you have to describe a desk, make it awesome.
— Darynda Jones
Let your eyes be the camera and your imagination be the set.
— Raleigh Daniels, The God of Alpha
Whenever I write I always transport myself into the story to get a better glimpse to what I am capturing.
— Raleigh Daniels, The God of Alpha
A love of writing is far greater than any word count.
— Molly Looby
I learn from everything I do, right and wrong. I think it helps me grow as a writer and a person.
— Darynda Jones
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. A finished manuscript is AWESOME! So go, go, go! *waves pompoms*
— Darynda Jones
Don't let writers block push you around. Figure out what the problem is,whether it's with the ms or it's in your personal life, and face it head on. Don't stop writing. Just try really hard to work through it.
— Darynda Jones
Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.
— Max Hawthorne
Sometimes, I’ll craft a scene that’s so poignant; on the last keystroke I’ll raise my hands high overhead and scream “Yes!” at the top of my lungs. I have yet to experience an orgasm so powerful and fulfilling.
— Max Hawthorne
You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.
— Courage Knight, Do-It-Yourself Editing: A Guide for the eBook Author
Writing is like knitting. Stitch after stitch, word by word, and before you know it you have a book ... or a jumper!
— Luggs
Any advice for how to be a successful author?""Yes. Don't be a woman. And be dead. And do both at the same time, if you can.
— Michelle Franklin
writing - like any art - is so damned personal that there really isn't a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it works, then excellent. But, if it doesn't, you have to realize that perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You don't jive with the advice.
— Mur Lafferty
When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down!
— Max Hawthorne
Graft at your craft!
— Andrew Thomas
How to write a book? Start writing,continue writing and finish writing.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana
I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.-Poul_Anderson
— Poul Anderson
Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.
— Michelle Tea, Valencia
Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, "Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate.
— Katherine Anne Porter
What you don't write is often more important than what you do
— Ernest Hemingway
Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.
— Breyten Breytenbach, Intimate Stranger
At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along, you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
If you have nothing good to say about someone, write a book about them. - Carmen Fox, Life Motto
— Carmen Fox
Tighten your prose so the story flows.
— Anna Dobritt
The shock of recognition is a moment of excitement that shakes the soul. It may be hard to describe, but like other forms of love, you will know it when you feel it
— Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction
Park your ego and listen to your readers. They can be your best friend or your worst enemy. But chances are you'll learn something from them.
— Eliza Green
If you aren't willing to put your best work out there, write for yourself. Don't ever publish.
— Eliza Green
Anything added can be subtracted
—  anything verbose can be simplified
In fact, “talent” is as common as mud; what’s rare is the motivation to sit down and actually do something with one’s talent, the discipline to do it regularly, and the persistence to stick with it until it’s finished.
— Patricia C. Wrede
When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief
— Max Hawthorne, Kronos Rising: After 65 Million Years, the World's Greatest Predator Is Back.
Not everyone is fodder for books,' said Rosalind.
— Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks in Spring
To write, live.
— C.R. Hedgcock
You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre.
— Joyce Rachelle
When you're writing, don't forget to keep your favorite audience in mind--you.
— Lori Lesko
Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.
— Gudjon Bergmann, The Author's Blueprint
There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.
— Gudjon Bergmann, The Author's Blueprint
Write a book, not the book.
— Gudjon Bergmann, The Author's Blueprint
Not everyone is fodder for books," said Rosalind.
— Jeanne Birdsall
Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arrested, lol.
— Kevin R. Hill
On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are."We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry? "I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.
— Roger Ebert
If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader.
— Larry Correia
Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.
— Chuck Wendig, 500 Ways to Be a Better Writer
It's not pain. It's raw material.
— Jo Bell
I’ve had situations when I’ve actually encouraged authors to self-publish because their book was poor. Now one would conclude that I’m asking them to self-publish because their book was poor and the self-publishing warehouse is where all the poor books belong. But no, it’s because “poor” is only my opinion, and I’m just one in millions of readers.
— King Samuel Benson
They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
I am grateful to all my readers
—  you inspired me to keep writing.
You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.
— Nancy Kress, Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints
For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.
— David Foster Wallace
Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way... There's another level... A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely... There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.
— David Foster Wallace
I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.
— Robertson Davies
If you want to be a writer, you have to keep writing, all the time, and when you're not writing, be thinking about and planning writing.
— May J. Panayi
For every idea that's been done to DEATH, there's a child being BORN who hasn't read it yet. Don't kill your dragons.
— J.N. Race
You’re allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character.
— Sean Platt, Write. Publish. Repeat.
There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The best kind of praise is intelligent praise.
— Rachel Heffington