"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is."

Flannery O'Connor

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"I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.'"

Maya Angelou

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"In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style."

Sydney Smith

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"I'm highly irritable and my senses bruise easily, and when they are bruised I write."

S. J. Perelman

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"In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them."

W. H. Auden

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"I type in one place, but I write all over the house."

Toni Morrison

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"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."

Thomas Wolfe

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"I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive."

Philip Roth

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"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

Ezra Pound

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"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action."

William Shakespeare

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"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."

Ernest Hemingway

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"I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well."

Don Marquis

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"A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again."

Carl Van Doren

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"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy—and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

Stephen King

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"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living."

Gustave Flaubert

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"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."

Charlotte Bronte

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"To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author's part."

Louis Auchincloss

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"A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past."

Vladimir Nabokov

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"To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself."

Anne Rice

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"Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels."

May Sarton

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"Nothing is allowed to die in a society of storytelling people."

Harry Crews

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"There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast."

Tennessee Williams

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"The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops."

William Saroyan

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"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

Dr. Seuss

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"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice."

Cyril Connolly

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"One always tends to over praise a long book, because one has got through it."

E.M. Forster

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"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."

Stephen King

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"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."

Norman Mailer

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"Unconsciously, you write to be read. If you want to write for yourself then you keep a journal."

Bapsi Sidhwa

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

Pope John Paul II

"Story is far older than the art of science and psychology, and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

Ray Bradbury

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"And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning."

Anthony Trollope

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"If I feel the same when I finish a novel as I did when I started, it means I didn't learn anything; that I've wasted my time, and probably the readers time, too."

Terry McMillan

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"Chance favors the prepared mind."

Louis Pasteur

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"Success and failure are equally disastrous."

Tennessee Williams

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"Outside a dog a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read."

Groucho Marx