"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds."
— Douglas Adams

"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)

"He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."
— Francis Of Assisi

""The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.""
— James Baldwin

"It's as hard to get from almost finished to finished as to get from beginning to almost done."
— Elinor Fuchs

"... And the only way to find that honesty is to not overthink it.

For your writing to come alive--to be multi-dimensional--you must barter away some control.

[Writer's Digest, February 2009]"
— Elizabeth Sims

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
— Muriel Rukeyser

""Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment." "
— Stephen King

"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability."
— Charles Baxter

"If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace."
— Katherine Anne Porter

"Narrative Tension is primarily about witholding information.""
— Ian McEwan