As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn’t write. It’s a process of discovery.
John McGahern
I am a drinker with a writing problem.
Brendan Behan
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
Jessamyn West
Writing is not a genteel profession. It’s quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
Rosemary Mahoney
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.
Sidney Sheldon
At the point where I’m trying to force something and it’s not happening, and I’m getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
Joni Mitchell
The reason that I keep writing is that all my most powerful messages about the fates of wild places that I care about need to have words as well as images.
Galen Rowell
People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: “Have you published anything?” – loosely translated as: I’ve never heard of you – and “What name do you write under?” – loosely translatable as: I’ve definitely never heard of you.
Brian Stableford
