"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing." Oscar Wilde

"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young." W. Somerset Maugham

"There are times when quantity is at least as important as quality in learning an art." Lawrence Watt-Evans

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." E.L. Doctorow

"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy." Kahlil Gibran

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." E.L. Doctorow

"He is able who thinks he is able." Buddha

"Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment." Baltasar Gracian

"Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer." John O'Hara

"Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it—and yourself." Rosemary Daniell

"If you would be a writer, first be a reader. Only through the assimilation of ideas, thoughts and philosophies can one begin to focus his own ideas, thoughts and philosophies." Allan W. Eckert

"Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while." David Eddings

"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window." William Faulkner

"I took a number of stories by popular writers as well as others by Maupassant, O. Henry, Stevenson, etc., and studied them carefully. Modifying what I learned over the next few years, I began to sell." Louis L'Amour

"Write what you care about and understand. Writers should never try to outguess the marketplace in search of a salable idea; the simple truth is that all good books will eventually find a publisher if the writer tries hard enough, and a central secret to writing a good book is to write on that people like you will enjoy." Richard North Patterson

"Never save anything for your next book, because that possible creation may not be properly shaped to hold the thoughts you're working with today. In fiction especially, anything that could happen, should happen." Tam Mossman

"When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time." Kurt Vonnegut