Writing

quotes and inspiration on writing

"Still, I believe the first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season." - Stephen King

"Here is the stuff of originality. For it is in the totality of experience reckoned with, filed, and forgotten, that each man is truly different from all others in the world." - Ray Bradbury

"A well-fed man keeps and calmly gives forth his infinitesimal portion of eternity. It sounds big in the summer night. And it is, as it always was down the ages, when there was a man with something to tell, and ones, quiet and wise, to listen." - Ray Bradbury

"The ideas will follow me. When they’re off-guard, and ready to be born, I’ll turn around and grab them." - Ray Bradbury

"You are, in effect, dropping stones down a well. Every time you hear an echo from your Subconscious, you know yourself a little better. A small echo may start an idea. A big echo may result in a story." - Ray Bradbury

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

—Terry Pratchett

(A linked pair of writing dictums: “Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.”)

George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." - Stephen King

To Read: Aldous Huxley’s “The Education of an Amphibian”