Quotations: Writers on Writing

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.
~WILLIAM STAFFORD

...I think best with a pencil in my hand....
~ANNE MORROW LINDBERG

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.
~JOHN UPDIKE

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~THOMAS MANN

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have just finished writing about it.
~JAMES VAN ALLEN

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops
of blood ooze from your forehead.
~GENE FOWLER

I write slowly because I write badly. I have to rewrite everything many, many times
just to achieve mediocrity.
~WILLIAM GASS

The first draft of anything is shit.
~ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.
~GLORIA STEINEM

I write to understand as much as to be understood.
~ELIE WIESEL

Writing is the act of saying I,
of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.
~JOAN DIDION

Writing is a struggle against silence.
~CARLOS FUENTES

Read, read, read . . . .
Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!
~WILLIAM FAULKNER