"If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate... where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose- the time and means of death."
— Martine Leavitt (Keturah and Lord Death)

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
— Anaïs Nin

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
— Jane Austen

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men."
— Joseph Conrad

"As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot."
— John Lennon

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
— Mark Twain

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
— Maya Angelou

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)

"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Stephen King

"If you love to write, then write. Don't let your goal be having a novel published, let your goal be enjoying your stories. However, if you finish your story and you want to share it, be brave about it. Don't doubt your story's appeal. If you are a good reader, and you know what is interesting, and your story is interesting to you, then trust in that. If I would have realized that the stories in my head would be as intriguing to others as they were to me, I would probably have started writing sooner. Believe in your own taste."
— Stephenie Meyer

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898"
— Mark Twain

"I found this on her website, and I liked what she said, cause I like to write, and her tips are very helpful. She begins here:
Beware: I can only give writing tips for my style of writing, because I don't know how to do anything else!

My focus is the characters--that's the part of the story that is most important to me. I feel the best way to write believable characters is to really believe in them yourself. When you hear a song on the radio, you should know how your character feels about it--which songs your character would relate to, which songs she hates. Hear the conversations that your characters would have when they're not doing anything exciting; let them talk in your head, get to know them. Know their favorite colors and their opinions on current events, their birthdays and their flaws. None of this goes in the book, it's just to help you get a rounded feel to them.

I think outlining--in a very non-structured, free-flowing form--can really help. I didn't have to do that with Twilight, but it was very necessary for the other two books. I changed my outlines often as the writing led me in other directions--the outline is just a tool, not something mandatory that you have to follow.

Some of the best advice on writing I got from Janet Evanovich's website. She said if you want to be a writer as a profession, then treat it like a job. Put in the hours. Set aside time for writing, and then make yourself sit down and do it. Sometimes it's easy--the words flow and you can get a lot done. Other times it's hard, and you might only get one sentence done in an hour. But that's better than nothing.

Here's a tip that really helped me with book two and three: forget writing in order. With New Moon and Eclipse, I wrote out whichever scenes I was interested in, rather than starting at the beginning and working through to the end. I wrote most of the books in scenes, and then went back later and tied the scenes together. It cut out a lot of writer's block to write whatever part I was most interested in at the time. And it makes it easy to finish. By the time you get around to writing the less exciting transitions, expositions, and descriptions, you already have so much done! You can see a full novel coming together, and that's very motivating. (But you really need an outline to work that way--to keep from getting lost!)"
— Stephenie Meyer

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."
— Saul Bellow

"People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy."
— Joss Whedon

"So what? All writers are lunatics!"
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted."
— Jules Renard

"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Write what should not be forgotten."
— Isabel Allende

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either."
— Meg Cabot

"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins."
— Neil Gaiman

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."
— James A. Michener

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Body armor. Four thousand pounds of body armor. And missile-proof glass? Nice. What had happened to good old-fashioned bullet-proof?

Well, at least this made some sense, if you had a twisted sense of humor."
— Stephenie Meyer

"There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione's arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
"Is this the moment?" Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. "OI! There's a war going on here!"
Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.
"I know, mate," said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, "so it's now or never, isn't it?"
"Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?" Harry shouted. "D'you think you could just --- just hold it in, until we've got the diadem?"
"Yeah --- right --- sorry ---" said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

"War is what happens when language fails."
— Margaret Atwood

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
— Mahatma Gandhi

"God created war so that Americans would learn geography."
— Mark Twain

"Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die."
— Herbert Hoover

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
— John Steinbeck

"Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?"
— Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995)

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
— Voltaire

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

"They're in love. Fuck the war."
— Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)

"When the rich wage war it's the poor who die."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son."
— Rudyard Kipling (If: A Father's Advice to His Son)

"Of course you know, this means war.
— Bugs Bunny"
— Joe Adamson (Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare)

"I think war is a dangerous place."
— George W. Bush