Ann Patchett on What Writing Is

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”

~ Ann Patchett (born December 2, 1963), Truth and Beauty

Source: Goodreads

Charles Baudelaire on Writing Style

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

~ Charles Baudelaire

Source: BrainyQuote

Lillian Hellman on Cynicism

“Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.”

~ Lillian Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984)

Source: A Quotation: Lillian Hellman

Neil Gaiman’s Wishes for Your Coming Year

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

~ Neil Gaiman

Source: GoodReads

Alison Headley on Starting Late

“In terms of being late or not starting at all, then it’s never too late.”

~ Alison Headley, Digital Preservation and Blogs, SXSW 2006

Source: Quotations Page

Theophile Gautier on Writers as Artists

“Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.”

~ Theophile Gautier

Source: BrainyQuote

Joan Didion on the Impulse to Write

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

~ Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934), Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: GoodReads

Joseph Conrad on His Dislike of Work

“I don’t like work–no man does–but I like what is in the work–the chance to find yourself. Your own reality–for yourself not for others–what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”

~ Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad ‪Nałęcz‬ Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857  – 3 August 1924)

Source: GoodReads

George Eliot on Control, or It’s Lack, in Writing

“Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.”

~ George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III

Source: WikiQuote

Jack Kerouac on People

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

~ Jack Kerouac, born Jean-Louis Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), On the Road

Source: American Society of Authors and Writers, It Happened in History: Jack Kerouac