By Paula Munier
As a reader and a writer and an agent, I am obsessed with not only with stories, but with storytellers. I read as many writer’s memoirs and autobiographies and biographies as I can find, I seek out interviews and podcasts and classes with writers, I go to conferences and book signings to meet my favorite authors.
But most of all, I collect writer’s quotes, those sound bites of wisdom that I post above my computer and on my screen and on the frig and all around the house. Here are the ones that have most inspired me. May they inspire you as well:
Why Write
“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
— Gloria Steinem
What to Write
“If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
— Toni Morrison
What to Write, Part Deux
“Look for the ruins.”
— Ernest Thompson
How to Get Through the First Draft
“Don’t get it right, get it written.”
— James Thurber
Why Rewrite
“Rewriting is where the game is won or lost; rewriting is the essence of writing.”
— William Zinsser
The Secret to Pacing
“Write the slow parts fast and the fast parts slow.”
— Lee Child
The (Other) Secret to Pacing
“Try to leave out the parts readers tend to skip.”
— Elmore Leonard
Where to Set Your Story
“Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else… Fiction depends for its life on place.”
— Eudora Welty
It’s All About the Feelings
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
— Robert Frost
Remember Why We Write
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
— Anaïs Nin
This post originally appeared at Career Authors