In recent weeks I have posted a bunch of quotes about words, writers, and writing. But there are so many that I had to return to this proverbial well once more. Following are twenty-five more quotes, mostly about the writing and publishing process, which have been sent to me by friends hither and yon (mostly yon).
- “Reading maketh a full man; and writing an exact man” (Francis Bacon).
- “It’s impossible to throw cold water on a dream birthed in the fire of God’s revelation” (Matthew Barnett).
- “You can make anything with writing” (C. S. Lewis).
- “I write for the same reason I breathe: Because if I didn’t, I would die” (Isaac Asimov).
- “I am a slow walker but I never walk backwards” (Abraham Lincoln).
- “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by” (Douglas Adams).
- “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell” (William Strunk, Jr.).
- “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader” (Robert Frost).
- “The redemption story is the greatest story to tell. That’s what I think everyone hungers for, whether they know it or not” (Francine Rivers).
- “If I waited until I felt like writing I’d never write at all” (Anne Tyler).
- “Writing books involves endless hard work” (Ecclesiastes 12:12, The Jerusalem Bible).
- “Writing is a vocation; it’s not just a way to get published” (Eugene Peterson).
- “Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead” (Gene Fowler).
- “The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn’t write” (Unknown).
- “Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it” (Michael Crichton).
- “A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason” (Margaret Atwood).
- “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure” (Samuel Johnson).
- “Writing is a struggle between presence and absence” (Lu Ji).
- “The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense” (Tom Clancy).
- “Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating” (Kate Braverman).
- “The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile” (Robert Cormier).
- “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon” ( L. Doctorow).
- “Start early and work hard. A writer’s apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he’s almost ready to begin. That takes a while” (David Eddings).
- “The demonic paradox of writing: when you put something down that happened, people often don’t believe it; whereas you can make up anything, and people assume it must have happened to you” (Andrew Holleran).
- “Half my life is an act of revision” (John Irving).
