426 Quotes About Writing-craft

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.

To be a writer is to feel everything and channel it into words that people can understand.

Good writers are not born, they are made in reading

W. Somerset Maugham once said there were three rules for writing a novel and that no one knew what they were. I do:1. Write2. Rewrite3. Two writes don't make a wrong!

Nothing is wasted when you are a writer. The stuff that doesn't work has to be written to make way for the stuff that might; often you need to take the long way around. And if you're writing memoir you're bound to discover things about yourself you didn't realize before, may indeed prefer never to have know, but there you are: progress of some sort.

Words are the writer's sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They're our enchantment and our temptation

...so I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside it's like lodestones inside you and sooner or later you come near something that you're supposed to be doing with your life and it's like a magnet. It attracts.

I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place.' And this is the least quiet place I’ve ever been in my life. … It’s like taking the bar exam at Coachella. It’s like, ‘Um, I really need to concentrate on this! Guys! Can you all just…I have to…It’s super important for my law!