2nd Half 2013 Quotations

Clearly we're still using 2013's budget for procuring images.

More quotes about writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics and possibly cheese.

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75. 

Benjamin Franklin


If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde


Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

Lloyd Alexander

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


Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Neil Gaiman

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner

The early bird may get the worm, but its the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Jeremy Paxman

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

Stephen King


A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Neil Gaiman

Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality.

Cliff Fadiman

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Stephen King


When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time. 

Lady Gaga

The mechanics of writing can be taught, the basic rules and tools and guidelines, but as in any art, all the rest comes from doing and doing and doing. The most important part of the process is learning to trust one's own vision, to work hard at developing one's own style and voice, and then having the confidence to follow where it goes.

Mary McGarry Morris


I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.  

Maya Angelou


I don't care how fucking runny it is. Hand it over with all speed. 

Mousebender