Joseph Pulitzer Quotes

Writing is hard work: it is like doing homework for the rest of your life. You are always chipping away at it.

Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle.

Writing is hard - writing is the hardest.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit.

Writing is hard, hard work; that's just the way it is.

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists.

Writing is a struggle no matter what the genre.

I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work is, right? To make the reader think it is not hard to do.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

During the day, if I don't have any other commitments, I'm usually at my desk writing, revising, or researching anywhere from four to six hours.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.