How to write

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. - Virginia Woolf

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say. - Charles Caleb Colton

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author. - Charles Caleb Colton

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. - T. S. Eliot

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. - Clifton Fadiman

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us. - William Faulkner

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. - Sigmund Freud

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do. - Aristotle

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. - W. H. Auden

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream. - Gaston Bachelard

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. - James Baldwin

It requires more than mere genius to be an author. - Jean de la Bruyère