"I don't have much time for a playwright that can't write a book, because I don't think they can. A play is a piece of cake to write, it you can write dialogue, and you can plot. They get much lauded, everyone from Tennesse Williams to Pinter and Stoppard. I'd like to see them write a novel. They couldn't in my opinion."
ROALD DAHL
"I've never had a short story published. So, in a way, I didn't really achieve my ambition. In that sense I'm still a failure."
JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
"When in doubt, cut."
FORD MADOX FORD
"Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work."
PLINY THE YOUNGER
"An even battle is more fun to watch."
ANSEN DIBELL
"The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself."
PATRICIA HIGHSMITH
"Most authors would consider it undesirable to approach a publisher in a dirty incoherent condition. But that is, in effect, what they do when they submit a dirty and dilapidated manuscript."
STANLEY UNWIN
"First, find out what the hero wants and then just follow him/her."
RAYMOND BRADBURY
"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft."
HG WELLS
"It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing. But I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
ROBERT BENCHLEY