“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.”

—Thomas Berger

“One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others’ minds.”

—Alfred Kazin

Photo courtesy of Susan Gibson © 2009. Used by permission.

—Bill Stout

“You will be judged, for your entire life, on the basis of how well you write. If you write well, people will think you are smart. If you write poorly, they will think you are dumb. That is perhaps unfair, but it is the reality, and you might as well face it now.”

–Robert Pasnau

“Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

—Katherine Mansfield

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

—C. S. Lewis

—Anton Chekhov

     “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” 

—Toni Morrison

Image by Kevin Dooley under Creative Commons license   

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.”

—Vladimir Nabakov

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.”

—James Michener 

Photo by Phil Hilfiker / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0