WoW Saturdays

Both "writers on writing" and "words of wisdom" can be shortened with the same word. Thus, welcome to WoW Saturdays, June to September 2011. Enjoy this collection of writers quotes throughout the summer.

To write is to invade another's space, if only to memorialize it. To write is to invite angry censure from those who don't write, or who don't write in quite the way you do, for whom you may seem a threat. Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

- Joyce Carol Oates

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. The consistency, the monotony, the certainty, all vagaries and passions are covered by this daily reoccurrence.

- Walter Mosley

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

- William Wordsworth

"Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies."

- Terri Guillemets

"Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared."

- Hilma Wolitzer