"What I have crossed out I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out I'm dissatisfied with."

Mille, Cecil B. De on editing and editors   

"Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH."

Noonan, Peggy on editing and editors   

"The waste basket is a writer's best friend."

Singer, Isaac Bashevis on editing and editors
3 fans of this quote   

"There is but one art, to omit."

Stevenson, Robert Louis on editing and editors   

"There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them."

Wiesel, Elie on editing and editors
3 fans of this quote   

"The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man."

Algren, Nelson on writers and writing   

"Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders."

Bagehot, Walter on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience."

Barthes, Roland on writers and writing   

"Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion."

Bennett, Arnold on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write."

Boileau, Nicholas on writers and writing
5 fans of this quote   

"Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them."

Bowen, Catherine Drinker on writers and writing   

"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."

Brooks, Mel on writers and writing
9 fans of this quote   

"The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them."

Butler, Samuel on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain."

Byron, Lord on writers and writing
6 fans of this quote   

"The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation."

Canetti, Elias on writers and writing   

"Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public."

Churchill, Winston on writers and writing
7 fans of this quote   

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing
4 fans of this quote   

"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan on bores and boredom
5 fans of this quote   

"Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you."

Fromm, Erich on love
225 fans of this quote   

"Two separate, distinct personalities, not separate at all, but inextricably bound, soul and body and mind, to each other, how did we get so far apart so fast?"

Guest, Judith on love
8 fans of this quote   

"A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent."

Angelou, Maya on love
11 fans of this quote   

"Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on faces