Writing

A man who keeps a diary pays,
Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful -- then,
His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fulness than of emptiness.
~ William Allingham, from Blackberries Picked Off Many Bushes (1884). Writing

With pen and with pencil we're learning to say
Nothing, more cleverly each day.
~ William Allingham, from Blackberries Picked Off Many Bushes (1884).

Not all writers are artists. But all of us like the idea of somebody in the year 2283 blowing the dust off one of our books, thumbing through it and exclaiming, "Hey, listen to what this old guy had to say back in the twentieth century!"
~ William Attwood

In this Journal, my pen is a delicate needle point, tracing out a graph of temperament so as to show its daily fluctuations: grave and gay, up and down, lamentation and revelry, self-love and self-disgust. You get here all my thoughts and opinions, always irresponsible and often contradictory or mutually exclusive, all my moods and vapours, all the varying reactions to environment of this jelly which is I.
~ Wilhelm Nero Pilate (W.N.P.) Barbellion, in The Journal of a Disappointed Man (31 March 1919). March 11, 1917 entry

This magazine is edited by a Spanish-American and World War veteran and is dedicated to the Fighting Forces of the United States and Canada.
~ Captain Billy's Whiz Bang (statement on early issues, c.1920), Studies in American Humor. Volume III (January 1977); William Cole. From Scatology to Social History: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang

Writers are among the most restless people on earth, you know. I have a theory that it's partly because as a writer you exhaust your surroundings. You see so much, you use it up, and then you need to be refreshed.
~ Bill Barich, in the Sonoma County Independent (Sept. 11-17, 1997). Bill Barich's 'Carson Valley' chronicles wine life in Sonoma County

Blake saw a treeful of angels at Peckham Rye,
And his hands could lay hold on the tiger's terrible heart.
Blake knew how deep is hell, and Heaven how high,
And could build the universe from one tiny part.
~ William Rose Benét, Mad Blake (1918).

Blake was mad, they say, -- and Space's Pandora-box
Loosed its wonders upon him -- devils, but angels indeed.
~ William Rose Benét, Mad Blake (1918).

I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both!
~ Sir William Berkeley, from Enquiries to the Governor of Virginia (1671).

Journalism's first law is that the more inspiring the inscriptions in the lobby, the worse the paper.
~ William E. Blundell, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing (1988).

The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the fervid page,
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age.
~ William Cullen Bryant, In Memory of William Leggett (1839).

The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.
~ William Cullen Bryant, Prose writings. II

If I really knew how to write, I could write something that someone would read and it would kill them.
~ William S. Burroughs, Interview in Rolling Stone (11 May 1972).

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas ... a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
~ William S. Burroughs (remark in 1964), quoted in William Burroughs: The Algebra of Need (1971).

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine (1985). Remembering Jack Kerouac

Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: For Godsake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
~ William S. Burroughs

My purpose in writing has always been to express human potentials and purposes relevant to the Space Age.
~ William S. Burroughs

Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads (1983).

Writers don't write, they read and transcribe.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Retreat Diaries (1976).

No one person knows much more about writing than another. I expect that when people think they know anything about it, then their case is hopeless.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, in the Philadelphia Record (Interview; 10 August 1913). Willa Cather Talks of Work

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 Sibert Cather, published in The Borzoi 1920 (1920). On the Art of Fiction (written in 1920).

[B]y national literature. ... We mean the expression of a nation's mind in writing.
~ William Ellery Channing, Annual Oration Delivered Before The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia PA (18 October 1823). The Importance and Means of A National Literature

One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.)

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
~ William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language, in a Series of Letters (1818). Letter XXIII. On Putting Sentences Together, and On Figurative Language

True to friend & foe.
~ William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Autographed note (1893)

My pen moves along the page
like the snout of a strange animal
shaped like a human arm
and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweater.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Budapest

When a writer becomes a reader of his or her own work, a lot can go wrong. It's like do-it-yourself dentistry.
~ Billy Collins, in The Kansas City Star (21 December 2002). Billy Collins at Bloomsday

I'll prose it here, I'll verse it there,
And picturesque it everywhere.
~ William Combe, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque (1812). Canto I

A thought comes ... it's a true feeling, a funny feeling. And I get to develop it. [Writing] is more fun than performing, because I get to color with words.
~ Bill Cosby, The Oprah Show (17 October 2001).

Did Charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Charity

Dejection of spirits, which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed. ... When I can find no other occupation, I think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme.
~ William Cowper, in The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1842). The Life of William Cowper

Fancy has sported all her powers away
In tales, in trifles, and in children's play;
And 'tis the sad complaint, and almost true,
Whate'er we write, we bring forth nothing new.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

None but an author knows an author's cares,
Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

A writer who claims to have a small ego is either not telling the truth, or lying.
~ William L. DeAndrea

One of them ... proceeded to write fiction like psychology, while the other wrote psychology like fiction.
~ William James "Will" Durant (on Henry & William James), The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

It's very important for me to maintain contact with the reader, because I'm writing to someone, and I'm desperately eager to achieve believability.
~ Will Eisner, in The Onion A.V. Club, Volume 36 Issue 34 (27 September 2000).

The term "comics" long ago became obsolete and inaccurate. It merely defined the content of the early joke-based comical strips. "Sequential Art" is a more accurate description of the form. I first suggested it because I believed something needed to be done to correct the feeling of inferiority by artists and writers in this field.
~ Will Eisner, in Famiglia Cristiana magazine, #38 (Interview; 23 September 2001).

Good writing is not done unless there are serious forces at work; and it is not permanent unless it works for readers with opinions different from the author's.
~ William Empson, from Some Versions of Pastoral (1935). Proletarian Literature

A hack writer who would not have been considered a fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven "sure-fire" literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
~ William Faulkner (on Mark Twain)

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
~ William Faulkner, recalled on his death (6 July 1962).

A writer strives to express a universal truth in the best possible way that he can: in the way that rings most bells in the shortest amount of time. He knows that he can't live forever and that each work might be his last and also that the next time he may succeed in achieving his goal. It is almost like trying to write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. It is an attempt to reduce all of the emotional capacities of the human heart into one phrase.
~ William Faulkner

And that's how the book grew. That is, I wrote that same story four times. None of them were right, but I had anguished so much that I could not throw any of it away and start over, so I printed it in the four sections. That was not a deliberate tour de force at all, the book just grew that way. That I was still trying to tell one story which moved me very much and each time I failed, but I had put so much anguish into it that I couldn't throw it away, like the mother that had four bad children, that she would have been better off if they all had been eliminated, But she couldn't relinquish any of them. And that's the reason I have the most tenderness for that book, because it failed four times.
~ William Faulkner (explaining how "The Sound and the Fury" came to be written), Tokyo: Kenkyusha (1956). Faulkner at Nagano

He [the writer] must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.
~ William Faulkner, Speech at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm (10 December 1950).

I think the reason anyone writes is because it's fun, you like it, that's just your cup of tea.
~ William Faulkner, in Faulkner in the University (1959).

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

[I]'ve got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil.
~ William Faulkner, in Faulkner in the University (1959).

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesistate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

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 is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.
~ William Faulkner

That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing -- from reading.
~ William Faulkner, in Faulkner in the University (1959). Session Fourteen: May 6, 1957

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
~ William Faulkner, Speech at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm (10 December 1950).

When you begin the process of writing, you decide on a subject -- a sow, for example. Then you decide which part of this creature would be of interest, a tail, a snout, an ear -- yes, an ear. Then it's how to make the sow's ear interesting. Should it be big, should it be small, should it be ragged as a torn coat or as deceitful as a silken purse. Then take these thoughts and form them like watery clay. THAT's your first draft.
~ William J. Fedigan

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.
~ William Gaddis, The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. II, no. 2 Summer (1982). An Interview with William Gaddis

I belong to a vanishing breed that thinks a writer should be read and not heard, let alone seen.
~ William Gaddis, in New York Magazine (3 January 1994). Gaddis in the Details

[T]here is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.
~ William Gaddis, The Times Union, Albany, NY (2 April 1990). Gaddis, Reluctantly, to Address His Readers

In my own experience, nothing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family and friends. To most people, even those who don't read much, there is something special and vaguely magical about writing, and it is not easy for them to believe that someone they know -- someone quite ordinary in many respects -- can really do it.
~ John William Gardner

Getting even is one great reason for writing.
~ William H. Gass, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 70 (Summer 1977). The Art of Fiction No. 65

The expression "to write something down" suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.
~ William H. Gass, from Habitations of the Word (1985).

In 1977, facing first-time parenthood and an absolute lack of enthusiasm for anything like "career," I found myself dusting off my twelve-year-old's interest in science fiction. Simultaneously, weird noises were being heard from New York and London. I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign. And I began, then, to write.
~ William Gibson, From williamgibsonbooks.com (6 November 2002). Since 1948

The insatiate itch of scribbling.
~ William Gifford, from The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1802). Satire VII

As office boy I made such a mark
That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
I served the writs with a smile so bland,
And I copied all the letters in a big round hand.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore (1878 opera).

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera).

No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
~ William Golding

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
~ William Golding

I have always liked it, it is still my favorite book. I do not like my writing, but I like this book. ... I wish I liked my own writing more, but like all of us, I am trapped inside my own skin.
~ William Goldman (on "The Princess Bride"), in Event Horizon Web Productions, Inc., Flashpoint Weekly Chat (8 December 1998).

One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print.
~ William Goldman, in Event Horizon Web Productions, Inc., Flashpoint Weekly Chat (8 December 1998).

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.
~ William Goldman, Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade (2000).

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.
~ William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1983).

If you stop, you'll never make up the lost day. If you double your pace, you'll kill your oxen.
~ Bill Gulick

[T]he more a man writes, the more he can write.
~ William Hazlitt, from Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820). Lecture II

The only impeccable writers are those that never wrote.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2nd series (1824). On the Aristocracy of Letters

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic, and oratorical flourishes.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2nd series (1824). On Familiar Style

The modern editor of the popular journal does not care for facts. The editor wants novelty. The editor has no objections to facts if they are also novel. But he would prefer novelty that is not fact, to a fact that is not a novelty.
~ William Randolph Hearst

You can crush a man with journalism.
~ William Randolph Hearst

You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.
~ William Randolph Hearst (cable to Frederic Remington on assignment in Cuba, c.1897).

The Western is a native American literary genre that receives very little respect from the literary world. In some cases that disrespect is justified.
~ Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen), in Will Henry's West (1984).

Always stop the day's work when you know exactly what your next paragraph will be when you start up again the next day. It keeps one from the frustration of starting the day staring at a blank page. And it also keeps your mind churning, analyzing and 'writing' even after you've put down the pen, typewriter, computer or whatever.
~ William Hefferman

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

Always begin your story with a short, strong sentence. Come to the point at once. Don't waste words telling what you are going to tell. Go ahead and tell it.
~ William Henry Hills, The Writer: A Monthly Magazine for Literary Workers. Vol. I, No. I (1888). Advice to Newspaper Correspondents

I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
~ Bill Hirst

It is true that writers often owe their most inspired thoughts, their most extraordinary phrases, to their generous typesetters, who assist their flights of fancy with so-called typographical errors.
~ E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm) Hoffmann, quoted in The Life and Opinions of Kater Murr. Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 6

[L]et fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know.
~ William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891).

[P]lagiarism goes on as it has always gone on; and there is no probability that it will cease as long as there are novelists, senators, divines, and journalists hard pressed for ideas which they happen not to have in mind at the time, and which they see going to waste elsewhere.
~ William Dean Howells, from Literature And Life (1902). The Psychology of Plagiarism

Footnotes, the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.
~ William James

Critics have said I write without spontaneity, in cold blood. I don't. I write in hot blood.
~ Billy Joel, Playboy Interview: Billy Joel (May 1982).

Journalists : the good ones don't have a life, the bad ones don't have a job.
~ Wim Kan

Journalism is a great training ground for fiction. It's also a training ground for screenwriting -- get your story in the first paragraph. ... I still feel like a journalist somewhere in my soul.
~ William J. Kennedy, The San Francisco Chronicle (13 January 2002). Q & A -- William J. Kennedy: At home with the politics of Albany

News work is highly addictive. It is the cocaine of crafts.
~ William F. Kerby, A Proud Profession: Memoirs of a Wall Street Journal Reporter, Editor, and Publisher (1981).

I think it well to remember that, when writing for the newspapers, we are writing for an elderly lady in Hastings who has two cats of which she is passionately fond. Unless our stuff can successfully compete for her interest with those cats, it is no good.
~ Willmott Lewis, quoted in In Time of Trouble: An Autobiography (1956).

A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

A writer does well to place himself in such conditions that he may experience as many as possible of the vicissitudes which occur to men. He need do nothing very much, but he should do everything a little.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1933 entry

I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller. It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Creatures of Circumstance (1947).

If you are a writer, live a long time. I have found that longevity counts more than talent.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

People often write obscurely because they have never taken the trouble to learn to write clearly.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Saturday Review (1957).

The ordinary is the writer's richest field.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

[T]he sort of books an author writes depends on the sort of man he is, and so it is well to know what is relevant in his personal history.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954).

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919). Chapter XLI

The writer must be playful and serious at the same time.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando: Or Variations on Some Spanish Themes (1935).

[W]e do not write as we want to but as we can.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey From Rangoon to Haiphong (1930).

We do not write because we want to; we write because we must.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale (1930).

[B]e aware that your reader is at least as bright as you are.
~ William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., quoted in New York Times Book Review (14 August 1988).

Perhaps a body of work isn't necessary for a short story writer. If you do one story that survives in an anthology, that's enough.
~ William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., in The Washington Post (26 October 1997).

Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well ...
~ William Topaz McGonagall

Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people don't understand what's involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that don't either don't have enough fortitude and they probably wouldn't succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing.
~ Peter McWilliams

A writer looks for and finds bits of people and experience -- a nose, an earlobe, fragments of youth and age, the way people walk or talk, eat, sleep, make love or make hate. And from these autobiographical bits of truth the writer creates his story. Every single bit is the truth, but the whole thing is a more meaningful and dramatic lie -- a magic lie.
~ William Ormond (W.O.) Mitchell

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.
~ Wilson Mizner

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
~ Wilson Mizner, quoted in The Legendary Mizners (1953).

A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times? I consider myself a fortunate man to have a forum for my curiosity.
~ Bill Moyers, Channel Maker (29 February 1979).

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885). Reading and Writing

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885). Reading and Writing

The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

The press is, like the air, chartered libertine.
~ William Pitt (1st Earl of Chatham), (1757).

Write what you like; there is no other rule.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry)

Manuscripts containing innumerable references are more likely a sign of insecurity than a mark of scholarship.
~ William C. Roberts

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read; if they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing.
~ Will Rogers

There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.
~ Will Rogers

When I first started out to write and misspelled a few words, people said I was just plain ignerant. But when I got all the words wrong, they declared I was a humorist, and said I was quaint.
~ Will Rogers

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do -- well, that's Memoirs.
~ Will Rogers, in The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949). Chapter 16

I suppose I became a composer because I heard my music played very early in my life. I couldn't stop doing it!
~ William Joseph "Bill" Russo

Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
~ William L. Safire

Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
~ William L. Safire

Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
~ William L. Safire, Words of Wisdom: More Good Advice (1989).

A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or the evil of world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.
~ William Sansom, from Blue Skies, Brown Studies (1961).

He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.
~ William Saroyan, from The William Saroyan Reader (1958)

I used to be the fastest telegram messenger boy in all Fresno. My nickname was "Speed." Finally, I said, "Take back your nickname. This pace is killing me." Anyway, I still write fast -- it's my impatient Armenian nature. I'm keen to find out how my plots end, and if I write faster I'll find out sooner.
~ William Saroyan, quoted in The San Diego Union-Tribune (6 April 1998). A good dose of Saroyan is what this world needs

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
~ William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and Other Stories (1934). Preface

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
~ William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands (1939 play).

These will I sing, and if one of you linger
Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,
And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
Saying: "It's human-true -- it hits me right:"
Then will I count this loving toil well spent:
Then will I dream awhile -- content, content.
~ Robert William Service, Ballads of a Cheechako (1909). To the Men of the High North

Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act II, scene ii

His letters bear his mind.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I. Act IV, scene i

Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act III, scene i

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55

This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure. Act III, scene i

Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again, and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. II (1764). Essays on Men, Manners, and Things. On Men and Manners

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.
~ William Tecumseh Sherman

Hard is the chase poor authors now pursue
In this old world, to hunt something new!
~ William Robert (W.R.) Spencer, The Fashionable Friends (1802). Prologue

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them. That is, he does not draw on a reservoir; instead, he engages in an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories, poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies, religions ...
~ William Stafford, from Writing the Australian Crawl (1978).

My life in writing, or my life as a writer, comes to me as two parts, like two rivers that blend. One part is easy to tell: the times, the events, the places, the people. The other part is mysterious; it is my thoughts, the flow of my inner life, the reveries and impluses that never get known -- perhaps even to me. This second part wanders along at its own pace, caught up in a story that touches the outward story but is not the same. Often this inner story hardly belongs to the place where I'm living. Whatever the calendar says, whatever outsiders demand, this other part of my life doubles back and becomes involved in its own chosen events.
~ William Stafford, You Must Revise Your Life (1986).

Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.
~ William Stafford, in Field magazine, Oberlin College OH (Spring 1970). A Way of Writing

An editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy.
~ W.T. (William Thomas) Stead, in The Contemporary Review Vol. 49 (1886). Government by Journalism

The duty of a journalist is the duty of a watchman.
~ W.T. (William Thomas) Stead, in The Contemporary Review Vol. 49 (1886). Government by Journalism

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
~ William Strunk, The Elements of Style (1918). III. Elementary Principles of Composition

Vigorous writing is concise.
~ William Strunk, The Elements of Style (1918). III. Elementary Principles of Composition

I could compose on white sheets, in longhand, but it would be an added handicap ...
~ William Styron

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.
~ William Styron, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 5 (Spring 1954). The Art of Fiction No. 5

Look, there's only one person a writer should listen to, pay any attention to. It's not any damn critic. It's the reader. ... The writer must criticize his own work as a reader.
~ William Styron, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 5 (Spring 1954). The Art of Fiction No. 5

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.
~ William Styron, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 5 (Spring 1954). The Art of Fiction No. 5

Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons.
~ William Targ

Go now, small Book, and if in thy limited circuit it should be thy fate to meet both praise and blame, may the praise come of the good, and the censure of the ignorant, since both of these are praise.
~ William Thomson, Outline Of The Laws Of Thought (1842). Preface

Although I disagree with those who believe that techniques can be intelligently discussed without technical terms, I have tried to avoid the deadliest sin of the textbook style: the proliferation of trade jargon.
~ William W. ("W.W.") Watt, An American Rhetoric (1952). Preface

As a general rule of writing, anything that goes without saying should not be said.
~ William W. ("W.W.") Watt, An American Rhetoric (1952).

I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part. I like to separate the two so I can give my full attention to one or the other.
~ Bill Watterson, Honk Magazine (Interview; 1986).

I'd like to see cartoonists measuring their work by higher standards than how many papers their strips are in and how much money they make. With four panels, the cartoonist has the opportunity to develop characters and storylines. It can be like writing a novel in daily installments. That's where the potential of the medium is, and I see very few cartoonists taking advantage of it. ... The strips I admire go farther than a gag a day, and take us into a special world.
~ Bill Watterson, Honk Magazine (Interview; 1986).

The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.
~ Bill Watterson, Speech at the Festival of Cartoon Art, Ohio State University (27 October 1989). The Cheapening of Comics

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.
~ Bill Wheeler

Of course as long as man lives someone will have to fill the herald's place. Someone will have to do the bellringer's work. Someone will have to tell the story of the day's news and the year's happenings. A reporter is perennial under many names and will persist with humanity. But whether the reporter's story will be printed in types upon a press, I don't know. I seriously doubt it. I think most of the machinery now employed in printing the day's, the week's, or the month's doings will be junked by the end of this century and will be as archaic as the bellringer's bell, or the herald's trumpet. New methods of communication I think will supercede the old.
~ William Allen White, in A Personal Letter to Lyman B. Kellogg (21 April 1931).

Dip your pen into your arteries and write.
~ William Allen White

Obscurity in writing is commonly a proof of darkness in the mind; the greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.
~ John Wilkins

Tennessee Williams said if he got rid of his demons, he would lose his angels.
~ Dakin Williams

If a song can't be written in 20 minutes, it ain't worth writing.
~ Hank Williams, Sr.

The task, both in concept and instrumentation, was one of extending something I had written three years before. I had to look back while at the same time begin again and extend.
~ John Williams

Few of us express ourselves well in a first draft. When we revise that early confusion into something clearer, we understand our ideas better. And when we understand our ideas better, we express them more clearly, and when we express them more clearly, we understand them better ... and so it goes until we run out of energy, interest, or time.
~ Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace (1994).

I grew up around writers. And it's all about attention to detail.
~ Lucinda Williams, CNN TV (4 February 1999). Lucinda Williams chooses acclaim over fame any day

Underlining italic text is one of the most redundant things you can do in life.
~ (Ms.) Robin Williams, Adobe Magazine (July/August 1995). Thirteen Telltale Signs

I have only one major theme for all my work which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive, non-conformist individual.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. i, 1920-1945 (2000). Letter to Audrey Wood (1939)

I think it's good for a writer to think he's dying; he works harder.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, in William Motter Inge The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957). Preface

When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Pittsburgh Press (30 May 1960).

Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated -- thrown aside -- a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions.
~ William Carlos Williams, The Embodiment Of Knowledge

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.
~ William Carlos Williams, Kora in Hell (1920). Imaginations

Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, as to taste, as to what ought to be said, write for the pleasure of it -- whether slowly or fast -- every form of resistance to a complete release should be abandoned.
~ William Carlos Williams, in New Directions in Prose and Poetry, No. 1 (1936). How to Write

I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.
~ William Carlos Williams, in the New York Times (28 December 1956). William Carlos Williams Wins Poets' Academy Prize of $5,000

If they give you lined paper, write the other way.
~ William Carlos Williams

The goal of writing is to keep a beleaguered line of understanding which has movement from breaking down and becoming a hole into which we sink decoratively to rest.
~ William Carlos Williams

Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse -- yours or anyone else's.
~ Marianne Williamson

If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
~ Andrew Norman (A.N.) Wilson, quoted in The Independent on Sunday (13 September 1992).

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.
~ Angus Wilson, The Wild Garden (1963).

No matter how thoroughly and searchingly we may have scrutinized works of literature from the historical and biographical point of view, we must be able to tell good from bad, the first-rate from the second-rate. We shall otherwise not write literary criticism at all, but merely social or political history as reflected in literary texts, or psychological case histories from past eras.
~ Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers: Ten Essays on Literature (1938).

[T]he business of writing is one of the four or five most private things in the world.
~ Ethel Davis Wilson, from Ethel Wilson: Stories, Essays, and Letters (1987). A Cat Among the Falcons (essay first published in Canadian Literature; Autumn 1959)

Deserted by kindred, disabled by failing health, I am forced to some experiment which shall aid me in maintaining myself and child without extinguishing this feeble life.
~ Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859). Preface

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.
~ William Wordsworth, Letter to Lady Beaumont (21 May 1807)

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
~ William Wordsworth

This dull product of a scoffer's pen.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book II: The Solitary

Wisdom married to immortal verse.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book VII: The Churchyard among the Mountains (continued)

All authors whatever in their dedication are poets.
~ William Wycherley, Love in a wood; or St. James's Park (1672). Dedication

[P]ray, let me hear you recite some of your verses; which to a wit is a favour, I'm sure.
~ William Wycherley, Love in a wood; or St. James's Park (1672). Act II, scene i

But I think as a musician, researching and writing about the history of the blues lends this book a bit more credence. I played with a lot of these people, recorded with them and saw them live. I just wanted to write a book that everybody could read and make it totally illustrative.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks) (on his book "Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey: A Journey To Music's Heart And Soul"), in The Toronto Sun (8 September 2001). Bill Wyman touring with new band

Just because people work for an institution, they don't have to write like one. Institutions can be warmed up. Administrators can be turned into human beings. Information can be imparted clearly and without pomposity.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 15. Science and Technology

Obscurity being one of the deadly sins, anyone might suppose that serious people would labor mightily to avoid it in their writing. But to suppose this is to overlook another force of nature that almost equals entropy as a drag on life's momentum. That force is snobbery.
~ William K. Zinsser, Writing To Learn (1993).

There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 10. Bits & Pieces

Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 4. Style

Writing is thinking on paper.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 15. Science and Technology