You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.- William Saroyan
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic; never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper. - Truman Capote
Listen carefully to first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work the critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. - Jean Cocteau
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so. - Andre Gide
If you want to be true to life, start lying about it. - John Fowles
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
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. - Red Smith
Read over your compositions, and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. - Samuel Johnson
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. That is too much of a temptation to the editor. - Ring Lardner
Everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. - Georges Simenon
You can't want to be a writer, you have to be one. - Paul Theroux
If you are having difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: Attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.- H.G. Wells
I start at the beginning, go to the end, then stop. - Anthony Burgess
A bestseller was a book which somehow sold well just because it was selling well. - Daniel J. Boorstin
The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. - Walter Bagehot
You can't blame a writer for what the characters say. - Truman Capote
First you're unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscuirty. - Martin Myers
There are no dull subjects. Only dull writers. - H.L. Mencken
While many things are too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. - Thomas Hardy
Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. - Samuel Johnson
if writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers. - Irvin S. Cobb
You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I ever tried to earn an honest living. - George Bernard Shaw
I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop. - Mark Twain
I write books to find out about things. - Rebecca West
I feel a need to have a certain experience, to see certain feelings displayed, to see certain ideas pursued, and at once point or another I made the audacious choice of appointing myself as the person who can conceivably do that. - Scott Spenser
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? - E. M. Forster
My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly. - John D. MacDonald
I write to achieve that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. - H.L. Mencken
If I could think, maybe I wouldn't write. - Scott Spenser
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. - Toni Morrison
If you cannot annoy somebody, there is little point in writing. - Kingsley Amis
I have tried simply to write the best I can; sometimes I have good luck, and write better than I can. - Ernest Hemingway
If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. - Isaac Asimov
Whatever has been well said by anyone is mine. - Seneca
No author is a man of genius to his publisher. - Henreich Heine
For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket, and took surreptitious peeks at it to make sure the ink had not faded. - James M. Barrie
Some one says, "Who do you write for?" I reply: "Do you read me?" If they say "Yes," I say, " Do you like it?" if they say, "No," then I say, "I don't write for you." - W.H. Auden
A great many people now reading and writing would b better employed keeping rabbits. - Edith Sitwell
If my books had been any worse, I would not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, i would not have come. - Raymond Chandler
I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories. - Washington Irving
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. - Samuel Johnson
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. - Ernest Hemingway
AND AS FOR MY WRITING:
Buy Haunted Marietta:
Read samples of some of my books:
Ghost to Coast Tours and Haunted Places, Ghost to Coast, and T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do:
