Short Writing Quotes

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

Read, read read. Read everything.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

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

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

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