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Video: Are you laying down or lying down?

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.