Isaac Asimov on the Importance of Improvization

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”

~ Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Source: Fantasy & Science Fiction Quotations: Isaac Asimov Quotations

Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum on Plot Necessities

“Not every story has explosions and car chases. That’s why they have nudity and espionage.”

~ Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, Unshelved, 09-14-08

Source: The Quotations Page

Agatha Christie on Writing Plans

“The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”

~ Agatha Christie

Source: The Quotations Page: Agatha Christie

William S. Burroughs on the Roles of a Writer

“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.”

~ William S. Burroughs

Source: BrainyQuote

Katherine Anne Porter on Endings

“I always write my last lines, my last paragraph, my last page first, and then I go back and work towards it.”

~ Katherine Anne Porter

Source: Page Fright: Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers by Harry Bruce on Google Books

Roger Zelazny on Ideas

“One of my standard — and fairly true — responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story.”
~ Roger Zelazny
Source: Quotable Quotes on Writers and Writing

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.on Plot

I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways of keeping readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell students to make their characters want something, even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger.
~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Source: Quotable Quotes on Writers and Writing