Fiction Writers Quotes:

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

- John le Carre

source: "Master of the Secret World: John le Carré on Deception, Storytelling and American Hubris" by Andrew Ross, www.salon.com. October 21, 1996.

topic: Fiction, Knows, Fiction Writers

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

- Gustave Flaubert

source: Gustave Flaubert (2009). “Madame Bovary”, p.16, Hackett Publishing

topic: Visible, Fiction Writers, Universe

I'm sure there's an alternate universe where I got to become a pulpy science fiction writer.

- Neil Gaiman

source: Source: www.sffworld.com

topic: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction Writers

I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.

- Kurt Vonnegut

topic: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction Writers

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs

topic: Writing, Successful, Interesting, Story Writers, Interesting Stories

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

- Gene Fowler

source: Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. "Successful Scientific Writing", p. 53, 2000.

topic: Inspirational, Writing, Blood, Story Writers, Writing Advice

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

- Michael Crichton

source: Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

topic: Book, Writing, Done, Fiction Writers, Book Writing

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

- Barbara Kingsolver

topic: People, Trying, Want, Creative People, Inspiration And Creativity

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

- Ernest Hemingway

topic: Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters, Inspiration To Write, Starting To Write

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

- Barbara Kingsolver

topic: Life, Being Alone, Writing, Creative People, Inspiration To Write

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

- Ernest Hemingway

source: Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

topic: Dog, Writing, Sisterhood, Swedish, Inspiration To Write

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

- Alice Munro

topic: Writing, People, Anecdotes, Story Writers, Story Writing

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created - nothing.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Writing, Individual, Type, Writing Fiction, Famous Writers

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

- William Faulkner

topic: Dream, Writing, Artist, Novel Writing, Writing Fiction

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

- Harlan Ellison

topic: Morning, Writing, Thinking, Inspiration To Write, Story Writers

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

- Joseph Conrad

topic: Writing, Men, Fellow Man, Fiction Writers, Foibles

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

- W. H. Murray

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Pursue Your Dreams, Innovation Inspiration

I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.

- Toni Morrison

topic: Block, Writing, Students, Writer's Block, Fiction Writers

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.

- William Faulkner

topic: Inspiring, Writing, May, Inspiration And Creativity, Inspiration To Write

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

- William Faulkner

topic: Moving, Character, Writing, Writing Fiction, Paper And Pencil

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

- Ray Bradbury

topic: Art, War, Writing, Writing Life, Fiction Writers

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

- Anton Chekhov

topic: Lying, Writing, Stories, Novel Writing, Story Writers

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

- Terry Pratchett

topic: Block, Writing, California, Writing Fiction, Writer's Block

Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

- Isaac Asimov

topic: Writing, Rejection, Soul, Fiction Writers

Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

- John W. Campbell

topic: Home, Editors, Writing And Reading, Writers Reading, Fiction Writers

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

- Pete Hamill

source: "Independent Lens. The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2013.

topic: Writing, World, Heavy, Fiction Writers, Fiction Writing

Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.

- Colin Greenland

topic: Sex, Writing, Desire, Fiction Writers, Climax

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

- Irvin S. Cobb

topic: Writing, Too Much, Good Business, Fiction Writers

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

- Mark Twain

topic: Character, Writing, Land, Fiction Writers, Bad Writing

In a good play, everyone is in the right.

- Christian Friedrich Hebbel

topic: Writing, Play, Fiction Writers, Fiction Writing

The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.

- James Gunn

topic: Writing, Unique, Stuff, Fiction Writers, Fiction Writing

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

- James Frey

topic: Writing, Conflict, Dramatic, Dramatic Writing, Fiction Writers

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

- Harlan Ellison

topic: Writing, Intelligent, Praise, Please Yourself, Wittiest

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

- John Y. Campbell

topic: Home, Writing, Simple, Story Writers, Reading And Writing

If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

- T. S. Eliot

topic: Writing, Bangs, Ends, Fiction Writers, Fiction Writing

I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.

- Poppy Z. Brite

topic: Writing, Thinking, Voice, Fiction Writers

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

source: Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.169, Grove Press

topic: Writing, Technology, Fiction, Modern Technology, Fiction Writers

Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

- Nancy Kress

topic: Writing, Stuff, Fiction, Fiction Writers, Fiction Writing

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

- Gustave Flaubert

topic: Writing, Sound, Ears, Novel Writing, Writing Fiction

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

- Harlan Ellison

topic: Book, Writing, World, Writing By Writers, Fiction Writers

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

- E. L. Doctorow

source: Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

topic: Writing, Schizophrenia, Form, Writing Advice, Inspiring Writing

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

- E. L. Doctorow

topic: Nature, Rain, Writing, Inspiration To Write, Great Writing

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

- Kurt Vonnegut

topic: Writing, Editors, Rejection, Literary Criticism, Sundaes

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

- Ray Bradbury

topic: Inspirational, Writing, Reality, Inspiring Writing, Writers And Writing

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

source: 1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

topic: Honesty, Integrity, Writing, Creative Writing, Power Of Words

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

- Lillian Hellman

topic: Inspirational, Writing, Talking, Writing Fiction, Fiction Writers

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

- Stephen King

topic: Lying, Kids, Writing, Writing Fiction, Reading And Writing

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

- Joseph Conrad

source: The Nigger of the Narcissus preface (1897)

topic: Writing, Trying, Tasks, Power Of Words, Fiction Writers

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

- Winston Churchill

topic: Book, Adventure, Writing, Servitude, Writing Fiction

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

- Woody Allen

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Positive, Innovation And Leadership, Innovation Inspiration

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

- Richard Bach

topic: Perseverance, Writing, Quitting, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Jonathan Seagull

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

- James A. Michener

source: Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

topic: Writing, Swings, Emotion, Story Writing, Swirls

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

- Agatha Christie

topic: Time, Book, Memorable, Hercule Poirot, Spring Cleaning