Quotes about Writing: H

Writing is a crummy profession, but a good hobby. ~ Paavo Haavikko
Voice is the je ne sais quoi of spirited writing. It separates brochures and brilliance, memo and memoir, a ship’s log and The Old Man and the Sea. The best writers stamp prose with their own distinctive personality; their timbre and tone are as recognizable as their voices on the phone. To cultivate voice, you must listen for the music of language—the vernacular, the syntactic tics, the cadences. ~ Constance Hale
Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues – which takes years. ~ Alex Haley
Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing. ~ Donald Hall
Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life. ~ James Norman Hall
Writing wasn’t easy to start. After I finally did it, I realized it was the most direct contact possible with the part of myself I thought I had lost, and which I constantly find new things from. Writing also includes the possibility of living many lives as well as living in any time or world possible. I can satisfy my enthusiasm for research, but jump like a calf outside the strict boundaries of science. I can speak about things that are important to me and somebody listens. It’s wonderful! ~ Virpi Hämeen-Anttila

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what he thinks about dogs. ~ Christopher Hampton
Put weather in. ~ Joseph Hansen
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way. ~ Richard Harding Davis
The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish. ~ Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
The reason why many people are so fond of using superlatives, is, they are so positive that the poor positive is not half positive enough for them. ~ Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~ Graycie Harmon
Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too. ~ Graycie Harmon
I even shower with my pen, in case any ideas drip out of the waterhead. ~ Graycie Harmon

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and put words together. ~ Robert Harris
It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about. ~ L P. Hartley
Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorn
The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds. ~ Harold Hayes
My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success. ~ Helen Hayes

Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You just can't will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it. ~ Will Haygood
Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing. ~ Melinda Haynes
I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. ~ William Hazlitt
Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. ~ Seamus Heaney
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. ~ Mary Heaton Vosse
In a good play, everyone is in the right. ~ Fredrich Hebbel
Good work doesn't happen with inspiration. It comes with constant, often tedious and deliberate effort. If your vision of a writer involves sitting in a cafe, sipping an aperitif with one's fellow geniuses, become a drunk. It's easier and far less exhausting. ~ William Hefferman
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. ~ G.W.F. Hegel

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~ Joseph Heller
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped. ~ Lillian Hellman
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. ~ Lillian Hellman
The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out. ~ Lillian Hellman
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail. ~ Ernest Hemingway

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. ~ Ernest Hemingway
I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The first draft of everything is shit ~ Ernest Hemingway
The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. ~ Ernest Hemingway
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. ~ Ernest Hemingway

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ~ Ernest Hemingway
I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Having books published is very destructive to writing. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The best way to become a writer is to go off and write. ~ Hemingway
A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it is such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers. ~ Ernest Hemingway

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. ~ Ernest Hemingway
A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent. ~ Ernest Hemingway
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. ~ Ernest Hemingway

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail. ~ Ernest Hemingway
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. ~ Ernest Hemingway
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. ~ Ernest Hemingway

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. ~ Ernest Hemingway
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. ~ Ernest Hemingway
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. ~ Oliver Herford
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks. ~ Herodotus

To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone – just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over ~ John Hersey
Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning. ~ Hesiod
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. ~ Napolean Hill
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. ~ Alfred Hitchcock
All characters are based on elements of a writer's personal experience. ~ Robert Holdstock
The only time to believe any kind of rating is when it shows you at the top. ~ Bob Hope
Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible. ~ Anthony Hope Hawkins

Stories are living and dynamic. Stories exist to be exchanged. They are the currency of Human Growth. ~ Jean Houston
I like density, not volume. I like to leave something to the imagination. The reader must fit the pieces together, with the author's discreet help. ~ Maureen Howard
It was unavoidable, my writing. I feel I had no choice in the matter, no more than I had about an unfortunate bone structure and a healthy head of hair. ~ Maureen Howard
Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think. ~ Elbert Hubbard
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard
Technical Expertise is composed of all the little and large bits of technique known to the skilled painter, musician, actor, any artist. He adds these things together in his basic presentation. He knows what he is doing. And how to do it. And then to his he adds his message. ~ L. Ron Hubbard
Every separate sector of artistic creation has its own basic rules . . . data which govern it. They are contained in the textbooks on these subjects. A professional knows the rules of the game as a matter of course so that he can achieve, in the upper strata above that, a high quality of art. ~ L. Ron Hubbard
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken bird that cannot fly. ~ Langston Hughes

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not. ~ Kathryn Hughes
To achieve great things requires that we become great people. ~ Philip Humbert
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Z.N. Hurston
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is very high; in reality, very low. ~ Aldous Huxley
Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers. ~ Aldous Huxley
To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations. ~ Aldous Huxley
It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels. ~ Aldous Huxley
To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations. ~ Aldous Huxley
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. ~ Julian Huxley

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