“[Hemingway] was allegedly a KGB spy, but he wasn't very good at it.”— Shaunacy Ferro, mentalfloss.com
“Also, 50 isn't old. 60 isn't old. THERE IS NO EXPIRATION DATE WITH WRITING. Literally, you can do this job until the day you die. So why are people fixating on getting it done before 30? Who started this myth that you have to?”— Susan Dennard, twitter.com
“When I arbitrarily write a single sentence, for instance, 'He looked out of the window,' it already has perfection.”— Franz Kafka, amazon.com
“A good writer, like a good reader, has a mind's ear...writers need to hear as they write.”— Ursula K. Le Guin, amazon.com
“The true Mathematical and Mechanical Form of all manner of Arches for building with the true abutment necessary to each of them, a Problem which no Architectonick Writer hath ever yet attempted, much less perform'd. ...Ut pendet continaum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum, which is the Linea Cat…”— Robert Hooke, amazon.com
“I don't *feel* like a late bloomer, but others have called me that. I published my first essay at 30, when I had a 3yo and a baby and no time, and before that I felt like a lot of people had written me off. But that's just when I figured out what I wanted to say. (My birth father published his first…”— Nicole Chung, twitter.com
“A lesson to learn is to protect your dignity and self-worth as a creator. A lot of people want to buy it, and some may offer a high price tag, but once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“You’ve got to write again. Just as daisies bloom as daisies and roses bloom as roses—you must bloom as a writer and I must bloom as a painter. Everything else about us is uninteresting.”— Kurt Vonnegut, amazon.com
“Writing requires courage, audacity. I'm not suggesting that there is something heroic about writing, but I do believe that to commit words and ideas to the page demands something of the writer.”— Roxane Gay, amazon.com
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”— Leonard Bernstein, goodreads.com
“I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.”— Stephen Sondheim, en.wikiquote.org
“It is good that for the moment you are going into a profession which will make you independent and mean you only have yourself to rely on, in every sense. Have the patience to wait and see whether your inmost life feels confined by the form of this occupation. I consider it a very difficult and a ve…”— Rainer Maria Rilke, amazon.com
“(But then that is one of the severest test of an artist: he must always remain innocent and unconscious of his greatest virtues if he is to avoid depriving them of their uninhibitedness and purity.)...In spite of all this take deep pleasure in what is great about his work and must just make sure not…”— Rainer Maria Rilke, amazon.com
“I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: ‘Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire;’ or maybe just: ‘Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.’ And then smi…”— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com
“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she…”— Rosemarie Urquico, patheos.com
“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”— Edmund Burke, amazon.com
“I'm good with words, but not the spoken kind; I've often thought what a marvelous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper.”— Kate Morton, amazon.com
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”— Gertrude Stein, en.wikiquote.org