Rick Polad > Rick's Quotes

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice. ”
― Will Durant

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
― Anais Nin

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
― Stephen King

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.”
― Jules Renard

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
― Nora Roberts

“Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”
― Steve Martin

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”
― Stephen King

“I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
― Mark Twain, Notebook

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”
― Isaac Asimov

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

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

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf