“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. … Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.” – William Zinsser
“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” – Annie Proulx
“There is only one plot — things are not what they seem.” – Jim Thompson
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” – Stephen King
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” –Anton Chekhov
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou
“The secret of good writing is telling the truth.” – Gordon Lish
“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” – Jane Yolen
“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” – Willa Cather
“I start with a question. Then try to answer it.” – Mary Lee Settle
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wadsworth
“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” – Dr. Seuss
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” – Ernest Hemingway
“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” – Gore Vidal
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott Card
“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.” – Charles Dickens
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” – Neil Gaiman
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka
“That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” – Tim O’Brien
“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis
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