Quoth the Writers...

W. Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

James Thurber: "With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs."

Scott Adams: Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

W. Somerset Maugham: "If you can tell stories,create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write."

Will Shetterly: It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

Rita Mae Brown: Writers will happen in the best of families.

Philip Humbert: Don't fear making a mistake; fear failing to learn and move forward.

Pearl S. Buck: I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Ursula K. LeGuin: You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.

Peggy Teeters: The only way to learn to write is to write.

Gloria Steinem: Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Tapani Bagge: Everything that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.

Mark Twain: There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Tom Clancy: The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

Jessamyn West: Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.