This file includes quotes and humor about authors and writing. Also see Books and Reading and Poetry.
Page Toppers
Authors Know the Write Stuff
I Could Write a Book
Lady Writer
Once upon a Time
Paperback Writer
Putting Pen to Paper
Story Teller
Teller of Tales
With Pen in Hand
Writers are Novel People!
Quotes
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. (Robertson Davies)
Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere. (Don Roff)
Editing is a rewording activity.
Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of the fiction is simple enough: the magic exists. (Stephen King)
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. (William Wordsworth)
Good science fiction writers don't dream about the future and hope they're right, they have nightmares and hope they're wrong.
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog. (Sandra Cisneros)
I conceive that a knowledge of books is the basis on which all other knowledge rests.
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. (Peter De Vries)
I say to people that I am not writing, but I keep on writing in the diary, subterraneously, secretly, a writing that is not writing, but breathing. (Anais Nin)
If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster. (Isaac Asimov)
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. (Toni Morrison)
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. (Robert Benchley)
A lot of people talk about writing. The secret is to write, not talk. (Jackie Collins)
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. (Ernest Hemingway)
Secure writers don’t sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity. (Robert McKee)
A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise. (Carlos Ruiz Zafón)
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. (Enrique Jardiel Poncela)
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers. (Stan Barstow)
A writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. (Rod Serling)
The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at time strangely wills and works for itself. (Lee C. Bollinger)
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. (Leo Rosten)
Writers are people who talk to themselves for a living.
Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. (Sharon O'Brien)
Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery. (Montaigne)
Writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E.L. Doctorow)
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Writing is the art of putting black words on white paper in succession until the impression is created that something has been said. (Alexander Woollcott)
Rools four Righters
(author unknown)
Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
Be more or less specific.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
No sentence fragments.
Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
One should NEVER generalize.
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Don't use no double negatives.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be ignored.
Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
Kill all exclamation points!!!
Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole. Not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
Puns are for children, not groan readers.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. And finally...