I think you must remember that a writer is a
simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis.
He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a
great philosopher, he's a story-teller. ~ Erskine
Caldwell
The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and
hung them like bangles in my mind. ~ Hortense
Calisher
There is only one trait that makes the writer. He is
always watching. ~ Morley Callaghan
There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a
writer who has just heard that his brain child is a
deformed idiot. ~ L. Sprague de Camp
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by
editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that
are left on the closet shelf at home. ~ John W.
Campbell
If you follow your bliss you will find a path laid out
before you that has been waiting for you all along and you
will begin to live the life you ought to be living. ~
Joseph Campbell
Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write
obscurely have commentators. ~Albert Camus
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from
destroying itself. ~ Albert Camus
Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing
in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank. ~
Eddie Cantor
Good writing is rewriting. ~ Truman Capote
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
~ Truman Capote
To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's
about, but the music the words make. ~ Truman
Capote
I think the only person a writer has an obligation to
is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in
me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then
I'm miserable. ~ Truman Capote
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in
the back yard and shot it. ~ Truman Capote
Writing is the art of second thought. ~ Rene J.
Cappon
It's always a bit of a struggle to get the words right,
whether we're a Hemingway or a few fathoms below his level.
~ Rene J. Cappon
Words are the most powerful thing in the universe...
Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they
produce after their kind. ~ Charles Capps
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the
least space. ~ Orson Scott Card
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.
The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them.
Most people don't see any. ~ Orson Scott Card
Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in
as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out,
and a good short story writer learns to include only the
most essential information. ~ Orson Scott Card
Most of the important things in the world have been
accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there
seemed to be no help at all. ~ Dale Carnegie
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on
the other cat's mat is a story. ~ John le Carre
Practise, practise, practise writing. Writing is a
craft that requires both talent and acquired skills. You
learn by doing, by making mistakes and then seeing where
you went wrong. ~ Jeffrey A. Carver
Write from the soul, not from some notion what you
think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul
is eternal. ~ Jeffrey A. Carver
A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional
truth rather than arguments. ~ Joyce Cary
Writing is a tool of transformation and can shine the
light on the inside, dispelling darkness, taking us through
external layers, bringing us closer to our souls. ~ Hillary
Carlip
If a book comes from the heart, it will continue to
reach other hearts. ~ Thomas Carlyle
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of
the dust in the street you make a mud pie. ~ John le
Carre
I don't want to take up literature in a money-making
spirit, or be very anxious about making large profits, but
selling it at a loss is another thing altogether, and an
amusement I cannot well afford. ~ Lewis Carroll
I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For
one thing, it's good for the circulation. ~ Raymond
Carver
It only takes one person to change your life - you. ~
Ruth Casey
Most of the basic material a writer works with is
acquired before the age of fifteen. ~ Willa Cather
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories
for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe
and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it
should be an art, which is always a search for something
for which there is no market demand, something new and
untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to
do with standardized values. ~ Willa Cather
The pen is the tongue of the mind. ~ Miguel de
Cervantes
The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going
slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words
instead of being pulled by them. ~ Raymond
Chandler
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because
it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to
the detective's struggle to solve a problem. ~ Raymond
Chandler
Technique alone is never enough. You have to have
passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.
~ Raymond Chandler
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a
gun in his hand. ~ Raymond Chandler
I have made three rules of writing for myself that are
absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in
progress. Never answer a critic. ~ Raymond
Chandler
At least half the mystery novels published violate the
law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be
inevitable. ~ Raymond Chandler
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but
one whom nobody can imitate. ~ Chateaubriand
For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the
rain [and] the noise of battle. ~ John Cheever
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of
light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall,
then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise
don't put it there. ~ Anton Chekhov
When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get
a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned
from me. ~ Anton Chekhov
My own experience is that once a story has been
written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It
is there that we authors do most of our lying. ~ Anton
Chekhov
It is perfectly okay to write garbage - as long as you
edit brilliantly. ~ C. J. Cherryh
Next to doing things that deserve to be written,
nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure
than to write things that deserve to be read. ~ Lord
Chesterfield
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the
very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact
opposite. ~ G. K. Chesterton
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely
out of selected passages from the best writers in the
world. ~ G.K. Chesterton
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a
bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~ G. K.
Chesterton
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. ~ G K
Chesterton
Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of
them are called mad and are shut up on rooms where they
stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and
they do pretty much the same thing. ~ Meg
Chittenden
The best time for planning a book is while you're doing
the dishes. ~ Agatha Christie
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator,
because when two people are writing the same book, each
believes he gets all the worries and only half the
royalties. ~ Agatha Christie
Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old
words, when short, are the best of all. ~ Winston
Churchill
Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you
can. That is the only secret of style. ~ Winston
Churchill
Writing a book is a adventure. To begin with it is a
toy and 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 out to the
public. ~ Winston Churchill
Grammar is to a writer what anatomy is to a sculptor,
or the scales to a musician. You may loathe it, it may bore
you, but nothing will replace it, and once mastered it will
support you like a rock. ~ B. J. Chute
I firmly believe every book was meant to be written. ~
Marchette Chute
General rules have been legislated into being by past
masters. ~ John Ciardi
I always tell people that I became a writer not because
I went to school but because my mother took me to the
library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name
in the card catalog. ~ Sandra Cisneros
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has
to make sense. ~ Tom Clancy
Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of
which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you
have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than
sailing single-handed around the world. ~ Tom
Clancy
I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the
questions are certainly worth thinking about. ~ Arthur C.
Clarke
There is a special sadness in achievement, in the
knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at
last, and that life must now be shaped toward new ends. ~
Arthur C. Clarke
The good writer, the great writer, has what I have
called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to
say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has
the power to express in language what he observes and
reacts to. ~ Lawrence Clark Powell
Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to
grow. ~ Lawrence Clark Powell
If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much
sense to be writers. ~ Irvin S. Cobb
The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction.
It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown
reality. ~ Joan Cocteau
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing
down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone
else with them. ~ Isabel Colegate
Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is
great or original, must himself create the taste by which
he is to be relished. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Put down everything that comes into your head and then
you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own
stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~
Colette
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
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest
people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it,
are the three great difficulties in being an author. ~
Charles Caleb Colton
As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real
life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot
desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge
against life. ~ Ivy Compton-Burnett
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ~
Charles Horton Cooley
One should never criticize his own work except in a
fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind
is suicide. ~ Charles Horton Cooley
My task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of
the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it
is, before all, to make you see. That--and no more, and it
is everything. ~ Joseph Conrad
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
~ Joseph Conrad
Don’t have your characters talk in long, perfect,
complete, grammatical sentences. ~ Barnaby Conrad
Nothing in the world can take the place of
perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than
unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded
genius is almost a proverb. Persistence and determination
alone are omnipotent. ~ Calvin Coolidge
I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.
~ Francis Ford Coppola
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to
get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.
~ Robert Cormier
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
is trying to please everybody. ~ Bill Cosby
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in
rising up every time we fail. ~ Confucius
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than
to write for the public and have no self. ~ Cyril
Connolly
Literature is the art of writing something that will be
read twice. ~ Cyril Connolly
No one is asking, let alone demanding, that you write.
The world is not waiting with bated breath for your article
or book. Whether or not you get a single word on paper, the
sun will rise, the earth will spin, the universe will
expand. Writing is forever and always a choice -- your
choice. ~ Beth Mende Conny
My task...is, by the power of the written word to make
you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you
see. That - and no more - and it is everything. ~ Joseph
Conrad
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an
effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not
invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. ~
Joseph Conrad-
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles
of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer. ~ Joseph
Conrad
Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the
most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the
ambition to get better. ~ Pat Conroy
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar; never
spread it about like marmalade. ~ Noel Coward
What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by
writers who can write only when it's raining. ~ Noel
Coward
To be creative, you have to be
wrong most of the time.~ Joe Craig
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in
them, to have the right ones form themselves into the
proper pattern at the right moment. ~ Hart Crane
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
Most writers can write books faster than publishers can
write checks. ~ Richard Curtis
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