Arthur Quiller-Couch Quotes

One of my rules about writing exercises is you never are allowed to put them in your book because it's just too tempting. You try to shoehorn things that don't belong.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

Five hundred words a day is what I aim for. And I don't go on to the next chapter until I've polished and polished and polished the one I'm working on.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don't care where it is.

Just writing a lot doesn't necessarily make you a better writer. You have to hear yourself as a writer, and the best way to do that is to read your writing out loud.

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

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

I have a problem with blogs - all the best writers benefit from edits.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.

I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise.

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

You have to go where the good writing is.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.