WRITTEN BY: EDDIE SNIPES – JUL• 02•11
Here is a collection of quotes about writing. I don’t know the source, but some of these have a bit of truth.

Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Television has raised writing to a new low.

Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

I just wrote a book, but don’t go out and buy it yet, because I don’t think it’s finished yet.

When he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. (About Shakespeare)

It’s a poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. (on the style of Time magazine)

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly every day.

A dramatist is a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom.

A good novel tells us the truth about it’s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

To be able to write a play a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gullible, passionate; he must be something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a fool.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose… anything goes.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

I write to escape … to escape poverty.

If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.

You call this a script? Give me a couple of $5000.00-a-week writers and I’ll write it myself.

The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns.

The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.

It’s a darn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.

I’m like a big old hen. I can’t cluck too long about the egg I’ve just laid because I’ve got five more inside me pushing to get out.

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

The reminiscences of Mrs. Humphrey Ward … convinced me that autobiography is a sin.

The difference between an author and a horse is that the horse doesn’t understand the horse dealer’s language.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.

If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn’t concern the central issues, it wouldn’t be worth publishing.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.

Writing is a lonely job, unless you’re a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.

I believe some people are just too dang smart to write fiction.

A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.

Let’s face it, writing is hell.

A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies.

I’m astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That’s how long it took that guy to write ‘Madame Bovary,’ and was that ever on the best-seller list?

The waste basket is the writer’s best friend.

A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.

The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.

The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result.

There’s one good kind of writer—a dead one.

Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.