They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him. – Ernest Hemingway
The perfect journey is circular – the joy of departure and the joy of return. – Dino Basili
The medals don’t mean anything and the glory doesn’t last. It’s all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing. – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else. – George Halas
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – St. Francis of Assisi
Dream big but think small. – Sue Grafton
Perseverance is not a long race; it’s many short races one after another. – Walter Elliott
Don’t people know that it’s the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day’s work writing. – Mary Lee Settle
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas A. Edison
I get very cranky when interrupted. I snap at people, sigh dramatically and slam my door shut. – Margaret Maron
It’s a help for writing in that I tend to live in my fantasy world for days at a time without interruption. It’s bad in that I tend to lose track of the things going on around me including missing important events in my friends’ lives. – Jeffrey Marks
Take your work seriously but yourself lightly. – C.W. Metcalf
I feel successful when the writing goes well. That lasts five minutes. Once, when I was on the best-seller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes. – Jacqueline Briskin
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison
Sometimes you earn more doing the jobs that pay nothing. – Todd Ruthman
The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. – Jonas Salk
These characters persisted in annoying the writer until she finally set down their story, after which they were kind enough to leave her alone. – Nina Osier
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. – Diane Ackerman
For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment. – Patrick O’Brian
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you’re doomed if you don’t try. – Beverly Sills
The most effective way to do it, is to do it. – Toni Cade Bambara
Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier. – Anonymous
I feel there are two people inside of me – me and my intuition. If I go against her, she’ll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely. – Kim Basinger
If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. – Julia Sorel
Action may not always be happiness but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Disraeli
You can have faith in writing itself. That’s where to place your faith, in the same way that a pole vaulter places his faith in the laws of physics. He will go up in direct proportion to the strength with which he pushed off, and he will come down every time. – Nancy Pickard
Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit. – Harriet Martineau
I don’t understand writers who feel they shouldn’t have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that… The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner’s or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back. – Nadine Gordimer
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes it’s undoing. – Eva Young
You cannot do good work if you take your mind off of work to see how the community is taking it. – Dorothy L. Sayers
Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order. – Anne Wilson Schaef
We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do. – Ethel Barrett
He who forecasts all perils will never sail the sea. – Anonymous
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. – Henry Ford
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dali
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side. – Audre Lorde
It’s beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake. – Susan Sontag
A writer takes earnest measure to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. – Don DeLillo
I developed a writer’s block that lasted for nearly nineteen years. I was devastated by a tiny error in my first book. Every time I picked up a pencil, I was afraid of making another mistake. – Teresa Miller
You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else – he never dares cut the rope and be free. – Nikos Kazantzakis
You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating. – Barbara Sher