I absolutely love it when writers write (or talk about) writing. Depending on what stage a writer is in the writing process, the writer’s quotes range from the devoted, to the confused, to the alcohol-dependent, and to the ultimately creative. In this short list of some of my favorite writer’s quotations about writing, I tried to leave out the mundane quotes and instead tried to include some of the more flavorful quotations about writing and the writing process. In most cases, the quotes seem to accurately represent the writers themselves.
Stephen King: I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.
Ernest Hemingway: Write drunk, edit sober.
Hunter S. Thompson: The only thing to be said this time about Fear & Loathing is that it was fun to write and that's fair, for me at least because I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work.
Elmore Leonard: I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
Isaac Asimov: If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Moliere: A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
William Faulkner: Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
Robert Frost: Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.
Flannery O'Connor: Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
Robert Benchley: It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
George Orwell: In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
Steven Wright: I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.
William S. Burroughs: 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.
Gustave Flaubert: The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
