Juho William Tau­ri­ainen via Compfight

All writ­ers are vain, self­ish and lazy, and at the very bot­tom of their motives there lies a mys­tery. Writ­ing a book is a hor­ri­ble, exhaust­ing strug­gle, like a long bout of some painful ill­ness. One would never under­take such a thing if one were not dri­ven on by some demon which one can nei­ther resist nor under­stand. ~ George Orwell

Fic­tion, imag­i­na­tive work that is, is not dropped like a peb­ble upon the ground, as sci­ence may be; fic­tion is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly per­haps, but still attached to life at all four cor­ners. ~ Vir­ginia Woolf

In sci­ence there is a dic­tum: don’t add an exper­i­ment to an exper­i­ment. Don’t make things unnec­es­sar­ily com­pli­cated. In writ­ing fic­tion, the more fan­tas­tic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your read­ers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story. ~ Ben Bova

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has prob­a­bly become a neglected insti­tu­tion, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shift­ing and chang­ing and search­ing. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treach­er­ous is the label of Suc­cess. ~ James Bald­win

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. ~ Henry David Thoreau

And by the way, every­thing in life is writable about if you have the out­go­ing guts to do it, and the imag­i­na­tion to impro­vise.  The worst enemy to cre­ativ­ity is self-doubt. ~ Sylvia Plath

What cre­ates a writer is huge, psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion. ~ Kathy Lette

My sto­ries run up and bite me in the leg.  I respond by writ­ing them down — every­thing that goes on dur­ing the bite. When I fin­ish, the idea lets go and runs off. ~ Ray Brad­bury

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~ Anaïs Nin

If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been writ­ten yet, then you must write it.  ~ Toni Mor­ri­son

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

Proof­read care­fully to see if you any words out.  ~ Author Unknown

Every writer I know has trou­ble writ­ing. ~ Joseph Heller

It is impos­si­ble to dis­cour­age the real writ­ers — they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.  ~ Sin­clair Lewis

Writ­ing is both mask and unveil­ing.  ~ E.B. White

You must often make era­sures if you mean to write what is wor­thy of being read a sec­ond time; and don’t labor for the admi­ra­tion of the crowd, but be con­tent with a few choice read­ers. ~ Horace

Writ­ers aren’t peo­ple exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of peo­ple try­ing so hard to be one per­son. It’s like actors, who try so pathet­i­cally not to look in mir­rors. Who lean back ward try­ing — only to see their faces in the reflect­ing chan­de­liers. ~ Unknown

After all, most writ­ing is done away from the type­writer, away from the desk. I’d say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you’re walk­ing or shav­ing or play­ing a game, or what­ever, or even talk­ing to some­one you’re not vitally inter­ested in. ~ Henry Miller

The best emo­tions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least ener­giz­ing emo­tion to write out of is admi­ra­tion. It is very dif­fi­cult to write out of because the basic feel­ing that goes with admi­ra­tion is a pas­sive con­tem­pla­tive mood. ~ Susan Son­tag