Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

Quotes

• “I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I re...”
• “Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsell...”
• “Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it be...”
• “Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down t...”
• “So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the tel...”
• “I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, a...”
• “Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a l...”
• “Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about...”
• “If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should b...”
• “Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refu...”
• “I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish len...”
• “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchan...”
• “Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the ...”
• “If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spik...”
• “When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step ba...”
• “You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lig...”
• “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings...”
• “The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.”
• “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
• “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
• “you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
• “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
• “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
• “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
• “To write is human, to edit is divine.”
• “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”