the art and the craft of writing

quotes from some of the world's best writers on their craft - some are wise, some plain funny and some deeply insightful. above all else, they are reassuring for anyone who attempts writing.

my picks are listed below, for the entire set of quotes, click here.

1. “All good books have one thing in common—they are truer than if they had really happened.” Ernest Hemingway
2. "A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction." William Faulkner
3. "One's religion is whatever one is most interested in." J M Barrie
4. “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges
5. “Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.” John le Carre
6. "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." Oscar Wilde
7. "If I see an ending, I can work backward." Arthur Miller
8. "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." Mark Twain
9. "It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way." Ernest Hemingway
10. "No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." H G Wells
11. “I have made this letter longer only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Blaise Pascal
12. "If I knew where poems came from, I'd go there." Michael Longley
13. "All things are difficult before they are easy." Thomas Fuller
14. “Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.” Chinese proverb
15. "Only bad writers think that their work is really good." Anne Enright
16. "Every time I peer into [my 13-volume Oxford English Dictionary], which is several times a day, I think: All the words I'll ever need are here; the only thing I have to do is get them in the right order." Andrew Motion
17. "The first draft of anything is shit." Ernest Hemingway
18. “Every writer I know has trouble writing." Joseph Heller
19. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Mark Twain
20. “It is impossible to discourage the real writers—they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.” Sinclair Lewis