"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. "
— Raymond Chandler

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away. "
— Raymond Chandler

"Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production. "
— Raymond Chandler

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. "
— Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
— Mark Twain (The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations)

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

"These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
— Robert Frost

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."
— Robert Frost (Robert Frost's Poems)

"The best way out is always through."
— Robert Frost

"Freedom lies in being bold."
— Robert Frost

"I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
— Robert Frost

"A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone. "
— Robert Frost

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."
— Ray Bradbury

"If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down."
— Ray Bradbury

"You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
— Ray Bradbury

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things."
— Ray Bradbury

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way."
— Ray Bradbury

"First find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him."
— Ray Bradbury

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
"
— Elmore Leonard

"Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
— Elmore Leonard

"“Skip the boring parts.”"
— Elmore Leonard

"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."
— David Mamet (Boston Marriage)

"My motto is “Be Prepared.” I am told this is also the motto of the Boy Scouts, but, if so, this only proves that they were acting according to my motto earlier than I."
— David Mamet

""The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.” "
— Frank Miller

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
— Mark Twain

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
— Oscar Wilde

"May the sun
bring you new energy by day
May the moon
softly restore you by night
May the rain
wash away your worries
May the breeze
blow new strength into your being
May you walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life."
— Apache Blessing

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."
— George Herman Ruth

"Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin."
— Robert Collier

"At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"I don't want to die without any scars."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"This is your life and its ending one moment at a time."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
— Stephen King

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once."
— Stephen King

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book."
— Stephen King

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
— Stephen King

"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"...you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up."
— Stephen King

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."
— Stephen King

"... you must not come lightly to the blank page."
— Stephen King

"Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly."
— Stephen King