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Staying Motivated

"A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing."
—Eugene Ionesco

"Writing is not primarily escape, but use." —Henry James

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
—Thomas Jefferson

"I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose." —Stephen King

"Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up." —Nancy Kress

"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to." —Somerset Maugham

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme." —Herman Melville

"Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story
that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about." —Alice Munro

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection." —Anais Nin

"One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating." —Niyi Osundare

"Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless." —Blaise Pascal