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I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
~ John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
~ John Steinbeck

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
~ John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
~ John Steinbeck

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.
~ Jack London

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
~ Jack London

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
~ Gene Fowler, author of Border Radio : Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves

Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you're in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman.
~ Tom Robbins, author of Still Life with a Woodpecker and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

“I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle, I found it too confining. It was just too needful; it expected me to be there for it all the time, and with all I have to do--I had to let something go.”
~ Trudy the Bag Lady from Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power... the world will know peace"
~ Jimi Hendrix

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~ Jimi Hendrix

"Mountains it is then. We'll rent a cabin with a hot tub, get naked, unwind, and shock the squirrels."
~Dane Hollister to Marlie Keen, Dream Man by Linda Howard, 1994

"When I'm there, I'm not here...I can't talk about my singing; I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of?"
~Janis Joplin

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.”
~Janis Joplin

"Wait a minute. Nice boys don't kiss like that." (Bridget Jones)
"Oh, yes, they fucking do." (Mark Darcy)
~ Bridget Jones' Diary

"Dying is easy for men like us. It's living that's hard."
~ Clint Eastwood as the Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976

“When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.”
~ Merlin, Excalibur, 1999

“I have walked my way since the beginning of time. Sometimes I give, sometimes I take, it is mine to know which and when!”
~ Merlin, Excalibur, 1999

"We romanticise... We shifted the balance because someone’s got to be the good guy against the bad guy; that’s the way stories are told."
~ Mel Gibson on William Wallace, 26 Oct 2009

"Write with passion in your heart; edit with ice in your veins."
~ Dermont Bolger, Irish novelist

"I've done the right thing before. Now I want to try the wrong thing and see how that goes."
~ line from Greys Anatomy

"Every new book is like climbing a mountain, one freakin' word at a time."
~ Cat Grant, erotic romance author

"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."
~ Marty McFly, Back to the Future

"I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead."
~ Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter to American Humanist Association members