Title page of Shakespeare’sFirst Folio(1623).
(Photo:Wikimedia Commons[Public domain])
Aspiring writers often wonder where to begin.
Love, suffering, loss, humorall artists attempt to capture the human experience.
Title page of Shakespeare’sFirst Folio(1623). (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[Public domain])
This can be a daunting task for first-time novelists and young poets.
For inspiration and guidance, beginners may turn to the words of legendary novelists.
Salinger offers a chance to meditate on the craft.
Portrait of Chaucer from the 16th centuryPortrait and Life of Chaucer. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[CC0 1.0])
Insightful by their profession, authors have reflected on writing and life since before the days of Homer.
Discover some of their best quotes.
You don’t start out writing good stuff.
James Baldwin photographed by Allan Warren with a statue of Shakespeare, 1969. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[CC BY-SA 3.0])
That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Octavia E. Butler
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
Geoffrey Chaucer
I wanted to be a writer, so I became one.
Author and professor Ralph Ellison, 1961. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[Public domain])
I wrote things down.
Ariel Gore
Portrait of Chaucer from the 16th centuryPortrait and Life of Chaucer.
(Photo:Wikimedia Commons[CC0 1.0])
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Oil portrait of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author ofDon Quixote. Oil on panel, c. 1600, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[Public domain])
Stephen King
Brevity is the soul of wit.
William Shakespeare
There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.
Homer
James Baldwin photographed by Allan Warren with a statue of Shakespeare, 1969.
Painter, photographer, and writer, Gao Xingjian won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. Shown here at at Galerie Simoncini in Luxembourg. (Photo:Wikimedia Commons[CC BY-SA 3.0 LU])
Toni Morrison
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.
Ralph Ellison
The pen is the tongue of the mind.
Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
Gao Xingjian
Oil portrait of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author ofDon Quixote.
Oil on panel, c. 1600, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Write what should not be forgotten.
Isabel Allende
Even the silence / has a story to tell you.
Jacqueline Woodson
Painter, photographer, and writer, Gao Xingjian won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Shown here at at Galerie Simoncini in Luxembourg.
Over time, one by one, they come back to life.
Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn’t it?
Sandra Cisneros
I did not ask.
Later I felt bad about this.
