A bunch of quotes by miscellaneous authors on the process of writing.

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, for it is a dangerous and a contagious disease.

I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters in three segments, all at once, though they were to be run on three separate days. In between two of the segments, she asked me how many books I had written, and I told her. She said, “Don’t you ever want to do anything but write?”

“No,” I said.

“Don’t you want to go hunting? Fishing? Dancing? Hiking?”

And I said, “No! No! No! and No!”

She said, “But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?”

I said, “Type faster.”

“I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren’t open that early.”

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then 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 out to the public.”

“Don’t be afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade to be learnt, or brickmaking to turn to.”

“Learn to write well, or not to write at all.”

“You write with ease to show your breeding / But easy writing is cursed hard reading.”

“More people fail at becoming successful businessmen than fail at becoming artists.”

“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel.”

“Writing is not neccessarily something to be ashamed of — but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

“A blank sheet of paper.”

“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”

“I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.”

“I believe that nothing completely satisfies an imaginative writer but copious and continuous draughts of unmitigated praise, always provided it is accompanied by a large and increasing sale of his works.”

“Nature suits all her children with something to do. He who would write, but cannot, can surely review.”

“If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you’d be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.”

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.”

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”

“If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you.”

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”

“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

“It’s in my skull and it has to come out.”

“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

“If I had more time, I would write a shorter story.”

“A classic is something everybody talks about and nobody has read.”

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to a dictionary.”

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

“I have more to say than Hemingway, and God knows, I say it better than Faulkner.”

“The relationship of editor to author is knife to throat.”

“A blank page is God’s way of showing you how hard it is to be God.”

“Writing is easy. Just stare at the computer until beads of blood form on your forehead.”