D.M. Kilgore > D.M.'s Quotes

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“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

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

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

“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
― Robert Frost

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

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

“When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.”
― Mary Higgins Clark

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.”
― Shannon Hale

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Once you start thinking about the lies people tell when they don't know they're telling them, the truths people reveal when they think they're lying, then you can start to build a world.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.”
― Rachel Gibson

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”
― John Jakes

“A book is not completed till it's read.”
― Salman Rushdie

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Bernard Cornwall

“Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code