Writing can seem mystical — especially to those who don’t do it for a living. How did Herman Melville think up something as brilliant as Moby Dick? How did Harper Lee come up with such a poetic story line that has touched countless generations?
We’ll never know the answers to these questions, but perhaps that’s why they’re so fun to think about. Truly good writing seems to come from a subconscious place. As much as we can try to force “good writing,” sometimes we just have to throw our hands in the air and say — there’s really no rhyme or reason to it.
Here are some of our favorite quotes on writing that speak to its enchanting nature:
“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
—Hunter S. Thompson
“I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”
—Roald Dahl
“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”
—Larry L. King
“The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.”
—Eudora Welty
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”
—Stephen King
“Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they’re seeing now, what we’ll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.”
– Jack Kerouac
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”
—Harper Lee
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
—Mark Twain
“Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real.”
― Nora Ephron
