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Video: A screenwriting ghostwriter has an ethics problem.

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

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

E. L. Doctorow

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

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

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

Jeanette Walls

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

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

Michael Burke

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

Robert A. Heinlein

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.