"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.

That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."
- Octavia E. Butler


"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
- Sylvia Plath

"Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works."
- Virginia Woolf

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." 
- Anton Chekhov

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
- Maya Angelou

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
- Franz Kafka

"I can shake of everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."
- Anne Frank