I've always believed in writing without a collaborator¹, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties².

Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)

I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I've never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don't think that there are takebacks. I don't feel right about it.

Alison Headley, Digital Preservation³ and Blogs, SXSW 2006

If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled⁴ the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - the effort, however humble⁵, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.

Ann Radcliffe (1764 - 1823), The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage⁶.

Bill Barnes and Gene⁷ Ambaum, Unshelved, 09-14-08

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.

Bobby Knight⁸ (1940 - )

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely⁹' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality¹⁰ will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Carol Burnett (1936 - )

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Charles de Montesquieu (1689 - 1755)

This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.

Colleen Wainwright, communicatrix, 03-23-2006

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier (1907 - 1989)

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

David Nicholls, One Day, 2010

She was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

David Nicholls, One Day, 2010

Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary¹¹. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble¹² words on scraps¹³ of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell.

David Nicholls, One Day, 2010

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris, interview in Louisville Courier-Journal, June 5, 2005

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural¹⁴ rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

Beneath the rule of men entirely¹⁵ great,

The pen is mightier¹⁶ than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Richelieu

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Edwin Schlossberg

If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.

Elaine Liner, We Got Naked, Now What, SXSW 2006

Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary¹⁷ escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, 'A Woman of Independent Means'

It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.

Eric A. Burns, Gossamer¹⁸ Commons, 06-15-05

You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled¹⁹ into actions and into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910), in Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1951

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided²⁰ to write for Posterity²¹.

George Ade (1866 - 1944), "Fables²² in Slang", 1899

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)