Top 100 Writing Good Quotes
#1. As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty.
Stephen King
#2. Writing good editorials is chiefly telling the people what they think, not what you think.
Arthur Brisbane
#3. I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.
Tess Gerritsen
#4. I love being in the studio, and I am a huge fan of live music. Without writing good stuff in the studio, you have nothing to play live.
Anthony Hamilton
#5. I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.
Sarah Zettel
#6. Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.
Stephen King
#7. Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#8. Writing good jokes requires effort. Think I'll just start dressing funnier.
Dov Davidoff
#9. There is really only one way to learn good writing: good reading and extensive writing and revising.
Robert Lane Greene
#10. It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
Jonathan Franzen
#11. Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.
Roy H. Williams
#12. In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code.
Karl Lehenbauer
#13. If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.
Jodi Picoult
#14. I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.
Edward Hirsch
#15. Good writing - good stories - are the imagination's firing pin, and the purpose of the imagination, I believe, is to offer us solace and shelter from situations and life-passages which would otherwise prove unendurable.
Stephen King
#16. What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.
Philip Pullman
#17. I simply love writing good stories, that's my passion.
Kate Morton
#18. The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.
C.S. Lewis
#19. It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.
Jasper Fforde
#20. I can remember - barely - when Elton John was still a good songwriter, or at least capable of writing good songs.
Terry Teachout
#21. You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Octavia E. Butler
#22. I know there's a lot of competition in the world of magazines and newspapers and we have to make headlines and be sensational and sell, and saying bad things about me is going to sell more papers than writing good things about me.
Madonna Ciccone
#23. Conservatives don't want to read good, smart books. They mostly want to read Fox and talk radio hosts writing about presidents.
Alex Pareene
#24. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.
Stephen King
#25. Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question Why should I buy this book?
Guy Kawasaki
#26. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.
Jesse Kellerman
#28. The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.
Tony Kushner
#29. Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.
Mark Slouka
#30. I don't trust men everybody likes. Being nice isn't the same as being good.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#31. I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.
Dan Fogelberg
#32. Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.
Joe Elliott
#33. Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.
Joe Eszterhas
#34. Spend sunny afternoons writing. Take weekends in the country. Dream. Drink good wine, eat fabulous cheese and great bread. Make the kind of love that destroys the bed.
Rachel Hauck
#35. I love experimental writing, when it's good, and good examples are much more likely to be found in the short form.
Nicholas Royle
#37. When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn't get any ... I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it's a good place to get writing, because you're so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those.
Clark Gregg
#38. Read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.
P.D. James
#40. It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.
Paul McCartney
#41. Good writing is difficult no matter what the reader's age-and children deserve the best.
Aaron Shepard
#42. And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
Ezra Pound
#43. I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.
Diane Setterfield
#44. We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.
Garrison Keillor
#45. These young writers nowadays. They spend more time networking to promote their writing careers than writing their books. Maybe that's why there are so few good ones anymore.
Lauren Carr
#46. Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Raymond Chandler
#47. To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.
Lucille Clifton
#48. Well, this whole question of how you work out the narrative is very mysterious. It's a good deal more arbitrary than most people who don't do it would ever believe.
Joan Didion
#49. I fell into writing plays by accident. But the reason I write plays is that it's the only thing I'm any good at.
David Hare
#50. Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story
it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story.
L.M. Montgomery
#51. People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought.
Richard Mitchell
#52. I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.
John Legend
#53. The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.
P.G. Wodehouse
#54. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Criss Jami
#55. Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
Walter Benjamin
#56. Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids
Diana Gabaldon
#57. I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.
John Steinbeck
#58. With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.
Cheryl Strayed
#59. Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.
T. S. Eliot
#60. I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don't know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn't even tell you what they are, or if they're good. I just assume they weren't.
Anthony Jeselnik
#61. A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?
Lewis Carroll
#62. People's good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass.
William Shakespeare
#63. Repeat your winners. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.
David Ogilvy
#64. She could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it.
Doris Lessing
#65. If you're writing songs by yourself, who's going to tell you if it's good or not? But if you're writing songs with somebody else, you get that immediate feedback.
Glenn Frey
#66. I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
Janis Ian
#67. The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners ...
Natalie Goldberg
#68. Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
Haruki Murakami
#69. I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them
Lana Del Rey
#70. If you go to a big city anywhere in the world and you need a doctor, just ask me. I can tell you who's good and who's bad. I've even considered writing a guidebook.
Steffi Graf
#71. Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.
Sheila Heti
#72. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...
Kurt Vonnegut
#73. It's good for you to write down your thoughts. It's
therapeutic because it forces you to slow down and think about
life.
Katie Kacvinsky
#74. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.
Julia Glass
#75. Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
Iris Murdoch
#77. I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.
Robert B. Parker
#78. I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
E. Nesbit
#79. Everything is written in my mind, more so due to my lack of vision at this point. After years of vigorous writing, it was more of a challenge to do it without paper or sidekicks. I enjoy a good challenge.
Ab-Soul
#80. Maybe we should all just shut up and read a good book.
Mary Sisney
#81. If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.
Steven Galloway
#83. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)
Eric S. Raymond
#84. Anuj Bahari has always been a really good literary agent for me. What a good agent does is that he manages many of your business aspects so you can keep your time free for writing.
Amish Tripathi
#85. Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.
Damon Galgut
#86. You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed.
Kurt Vonnegut
#87. I get the ideas from everything. Children sometimes think you have to have special experiences to write, but good writing brings out what's special in ordinary things.
Laurence Yep
#88. I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.
Anthony Minghella
#89. Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must.
Jane Austen
#90. I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
Larry Winget
#91. Being a good author is more important than being a best-selling one.
Tarang Sinha
#92. Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
#93. If prolific is writing a lot of songs, I'm that. If it's writing a lot of good songs, I'm something else.
Five For Fighting
#94. Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
George Orwell
#95. Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.
Betsy Lerner
#96. I don't want security guards. I don't think security guards are particularly good for your writing.
Mark E. Smith
#97. You can't beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#98. Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly.
Joan Didion
#99. "Good" people are those who don't hold in the thoughts, but find proper outlets like writing, painting, music, etc.
Matthew Carter
#100. When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.
Linus Roache
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