Luci Shaw:

A poem is a little lens through which we can examine at close range some of the details of the universe.

Will Self:

...I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.

John Updike (1932 - 2009):

On publication:

I still love books coming out. I love the smell of glue and the shiny look of the jacket and the type, and to see your own scribbles turned into more or less impeccable type. It's still a great thrill for me...

Taken from a June 12, 2004 interview with Academy of Achievement

Jonathan Safran Foer:

I try not to speak to my extended family before I write, because that just clouds everything up.

E. M. Forster:

The poet wrote the poem, no doubt. But he forgot himself while he wrote it, and we forget him while we read.... We forget, for ten minutes, his name and our own, and I contend that this temporary forgetfulness, this momentary and mutual anonymity, is sure evidence of good stuff.

C. S. Lewis:

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Anne Lamott:

...we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.

Bird by Bird, p. 15

Luci Shaw:

What makes a poet a poet? The slender antenna of awareness combing the air for messages.

T. S. Eliot:

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

Donald Miller:

I...understand every writer has a responsibility to tell the truth, and to lead a way through tension, toward peace, whether that peace is internal or external.

C. S. Lewis:

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

William Strunk Jr.:

Vigorous writing is concise.

The Elements of Style

Grace Paley:

You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

Anne Lamott:

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.

Bird by Bird, p. 13

Madeleine L'Engle:

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

The Arm of the Starfish

Helen Keller:

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.