Quotes On Writing - A Collection of Famous Writers

William Faulkner

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."

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"Don't be a writer. Be writing."

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"Read, read, read. Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master... Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."

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"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again."

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"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad but it's the only way you can do anything really good."

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"Be scared. You can't help that. But, don't be afraid."

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"It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and a pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does."

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"A writer needs three things, experience, observation and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of others."

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"Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else."

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"The best fiction is far more true than any journalism."

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"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth."

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"Take chances."

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"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid."

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Faulkner: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

Hemingway: "Poor Faulkner, does he really think big emotions come from big words?"