"Elephants feel the fatal footfalls of poachers a hundred miles off. Cats exit the room when oysters are opened. On and on, and on and on. The unseen exists and has properties." Richard Ford
"All things are difficult before they are easy." Thomas Fuller
"This race and this country and this life produced me . . . I shall express myself as I am." James Joyce
'The answers could be found . . . we could learn from diggin' down." Jack Johnson, musician
"If your daily life seems poor, don't blame it, blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches." Rainer Maria Rilke
"There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein
"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas
"The writer is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures for the purpose of improvement . . . Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, and for courage, compassion and love." John Steinbeck in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.” Chinese proverb
"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there would be no concept of humanity." Herman Hesse
"A book is like a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out." C G Lichtenberg
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain
"The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time." T S Eliot
"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how he feels about dogs." Christopher Hampton
"To be a person is to have a story to tell." Isak Dinesen
"That what we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself has changed, but that our power to do it is increased." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The harder I try, the luckier I get." Dizzy Gillespie
"I must impress upon myself that I know nothing at all, for it is the only way to progress." Edgar Degas
"Everything you can imagine is real." Pablo Picasso
"Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.” Joseph Campbell
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Eliot
"The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publishers and the readers can and will come later." Patricia Highsmith
"I am large, I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman
"This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, goddess, at whatever point you will." Homer
"My favourite piece of advice [on writing a book]. . . came from the Australian novelist, Elliot Perlman. What would he say to anyone who wanted to write a novel? He paused, then replied firmly, 'Think what you are prepared to sacrifice.' Louise Doughty
"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind they can change our world." Gautama Buddha
"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together." Eugene Ionesco
"Every time I peer into [my 13-volume Oxford English Dictionary}, which is several times a day, I think: All the words I'll ever need are here; the only thing I have to do is get them out in the right order." Andrew Motion
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” F Scott Fitzgerald
"The great artists of complexity, such as James and Mann and Proust, are always giving us a great deal -- of themselves, of their intellects, of their prose, of their gathered data. But one way of looking at the simplicity of Chekhov and Verga is to note how much they subtract, how little they give us, how often they invite us to fill their bareness with our own feeling." James Wood
"The only reason for being alive is being fully alive." D H Lawrence
"Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him and then choose that way with all his strength." Hasidic Proverb
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." Kurt Vonnegut
"Fiction is a lie. Good fiction is the truth in a lie." Stephen King
"Truth is a matter of the imagination." Ursula K. LeGuin
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people." Virginia Woolf
"The first draft of anything is shit." Ernest Hemingway
"Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." Gene Fowler
"With a novel you have to be good for months at a time. With a short story you only have to be good for a week." Norman Mailer
"I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning." William Faulkner
“Every writer I know has trouble writing." Joseph Heller
"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension." Oliver Wendell Holmes
"If you follow your star, you cannot fail to reach a glorious heaven." Dante Alighieri
"Art flies around truth, but with the definite intension of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before." Franz Kafka
“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” Ursula K. LeGuin
“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” Barry Lopez
“God made man because he loves stories.” Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlev
"I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones." John Cage
“Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.” Robert Moss
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." Plutarch
“I’m writing to describe some of the things you can’t take with you when you cross over.” James Salter
"The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story." Muriel Spark
"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine." Emily Dickinson
“I don’t use a typewriter. I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially, I’m a horizontal writer. I think better lying down.” Truman Capote
“The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.” Ezra Pound
“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain
"Knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world." Albert Einstein
“If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about your novel, the reader isn’t going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night’s sleep, the next day I’m not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.” James M Cain
“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day next you hit it again.” Ernest Hemingway
"The only thing worth writing about is the conflict in the human heart." William Faulkner
“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” F Scott Fitzgerald
"For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness." James Baldwin
"I don't fire up the prose. I just tell it straight and don't fool around with it." Raymond Carver
“A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.” G C Lichtenberg
“There’s nothing more difficult than a line.” Pablo Picasso
'The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.” Gustave Flaubert
'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.” Ernest Hemingway
“If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” Toni Morrison
“If we had to say what writing is, we would describe it essentially as an act of courage.” Cynthia Ozick
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” F Scott Fitzgerald
"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain
“Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.” letter to Vernon Watkins, March 1938, Dylan Thomas
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” William Wordsworth
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” Vladimir Nabokov
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.” F Scott Fitzgerald
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” Elmore Leonard
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Mark Twain
“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.” Sinclair Lewis
“Action is character.” F Scott Fitzgerald
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." Albert Einstein
"You have to shoot as high as you can shoot." Ursula Le Guin
‘I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be . . . But that’s the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next.' Haruki Murakami
“The only way an artist can fail is to quit.” Thomas Hart Benton
“Follow your bliss. Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.” Joseph Campbell
'No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a full stop put just at the right place.' Isaac Babel
‘As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimise, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought.’ Arundhati Roy
‘The work is the axe for the frozen sea inside you.’ Franz Kafka
‘The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the word instead of being pulled by them.’ Raymond Chandler
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ Saul Bellow
‘Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.’ Tom Clancy
‘To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.’ Truman Capote
'It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.’ Anne Tyler
‘When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing.’ John Steinbeck
‘One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily.’ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
‘Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.’ T S Eliot
‘How do I know what I think until I see what I say?’ E M Forster
'God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people’s secrets we want to know -- it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.' August Strindberg
'Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.' Gustave Flaubert
'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
"As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness." Ursula Le Guin
"How can you write if you can't cry?" Ring Lardner
"Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none." Jules Renard
‘'Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare." Guy de Maupassant
"Anybody can write an exciting story and make it interesting. The trick is to learn how to write a quiet story and make it interesting." Ernest Hemingway
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.” F Scott Fitzgerald
“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” Marc Chagall
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
‘Make it new.’ Ezra Pound
