Alberta Romance Writers' Association

1. Writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can only see as far as   your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.   ~E.L. Doctorow

2. An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.   ~Francois Rene de Chateaubriand, Le Genie du Christianisme

3. Writers are just people who have a whole lot on the inside that they need to get to the outside, with pen and paper as their preferred method of transport.  Same with dancers, artists, and singers – all the same urges with differing transportation.   ~Graycie Harmon

4. It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I had become too famous. ~Robert Benchley

5. The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector.  This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. ~Ernest Hemingway

6. The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.   ~Samuel Johnson

7. Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the writer – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.   ~E.L. Doctorow

8. Use what talent you possess : the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.   ~Henry Van Dyke

9. Don't say you don't have enough time.  You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.   ~H. Jackson Brown

10. Hitch your wagon to a star.   ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. But he that dare not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose. ~Anne Bronte

12. A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”   ~Thomas Mann