10 Writing Quotes by Past Authors

"If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away." -Victor Hugo (1802-1885), author of works such as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." -Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author of works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.

"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness." -Edith Wharton (1862-1937), author of works such as The Age of Innocents.

"Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none." -Jules Renard (1864-1910)

​"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." -H. G. Wells (1866-1946), author of works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds.

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -Thomas Mann (1875-1955), author of works such as The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus.

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration." -Ernest Hemingway (1999-1961), author of works such as The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." -Robert Heinlein (1907-1988), author of works such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.

"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance." -Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), author of works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.

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"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil." -Truman Capote (1924-1984), author of works such as Breakfast at Tiffany's.