“Write first with a pen. It’s too easy on the computer to change a word, then forget what it was. Also, don’t get too social. Write for whatever holy thing you believe in, not for your poetry workshop fellows. And dare once in a while to throw a poem away. The main thing is to know that your craving…”— Mary Oliver, writersalmanac.org
“I was very careful never to take an interesting job. Not an interesting one. I took lots of jobs. But if you have an interesting job you get interested in it. I also began in those years to keep early hours. … If anybody has a job and starts at 9, there’s no reason why they can’t get up at 4:30 or 5…”— Mary Oliver, writersalmanac.org
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”— Ernest Hemingway, goodreads.com
“If I were to get a regular job that’s something I would struggle with.”— Mira Gonzalez, thecreativeindependent.com
“If you’re somebody who’s popular enough online, you’ll get recognized. That’s a thing that happens. It’s not like I’m such a huge celebrity that everyone’s going to recognize me, but I’ve had it happen a few times already, where people who I don’t know come up to me and are like, ‘Are you the girl w…”— Mira Gonzalez, thecreativeindependent.com
“It’s hard because you can’t really make money off just tweeting or instagramming.”— Mira Gonzalez, thecreativeindependent.com
“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I hav…”— Mary Oliver, amazon.com
“Of this there can be no question — creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this — who does not swallow this — is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity shoul…”— Mary Oliver, amazon.com
“Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with l…”— Mary Oliver, amazon.com
“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in.”— Mary Oliver, amazon.com
“I have one rule about writing and it’s this: don’t write about how hard it is to write.”— Rob Plenty, actuallyitsrobpentydotorg.com
“YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT. YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT. YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT. YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT. YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT. YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NEEDS MY INPUT”— kelly catchpole, medium.com
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”— Anne Lamott, amazon.com
“I want to become an uber famous writer someday, just so that when people ask me how I got there I won't smile politely and say, 'I'm blessed.' I'll be like, 'YO. HI. I SLEPT IN MY OFFICE MOTHERFUCKERS. I SPENT YEARS WRITING FOR FREE AND EATING RICE FOR DINNER. I HAD NO SOCIAL LIFE. GOOD THINGS DON'T…”— Heidi Priebe, twitter.com
“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”— Shauna Niequist, amazon.com
“We had nothing. I mean, I was working at a gas station. I was pumping gas. And then when I graduated from school, she was still in school. Then when I got a job working at a wet-wash laundry because I couldn't get a teaching job, we had jack shit for money. She was working in a Dunkin' Donuts when I…”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com