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Writing about writing is, by its nature, a dodgy business, because in what venue are your words more likely to be examined, explored, poked and prodded until every shade and nuance has been exposed? And yet, the practice of writing has generated some of the best quotes I've collected.

Robert Benchley spoke to anyone who has experienced the inexplicable vagaries of the writing business when he penned this gem: "It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."

Those who hope to learn the secrets of writing can draw on these pearls of wisdom from William Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Chet Williamson has one to offer, however: "If I've learned one thing, it is: Never try to write a bestseller. Instead, tell the story that you want to tell."

But, as Maya Angelou pointed out, the vocation of writing is more a need than a desire: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Or, as Annie Dillard put it: "Write as if you are dying." But if you survive the experience, use it, or so said Octavia Butler: "I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing."

Still, writers will differ on just how hard the task is. Gene Fowler described it this way: "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." John Lennon, on the other hand, explained: "I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book." And Henry James offers this encouragement to those who believe knowledge is the key to expression: "I know everything. One has to, to write decently."

It's not an easy business. T.S. Eliot, perhaps, put it best when he stated: "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." Frank Harris, on the other hand, didn't think the problem lay at his end of the equation: "I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers."

Charlotte Bronte believed that words have a life, or at least a will, of their own: "The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that at times strangely wills and works for itself." And Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly seemed willing to give his words their own rein: "I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom."

Nathaniel Hawthorne cautioned writers to be careful how they use their gift: "Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

Let me close with this pondering from Charles de Lint, who worried that words might come in a limited supply: "Here's a weird thought: What if everyone only has so many words inside of them? Then sooner or later you'd run out of words, wouldn't you? And you'd never know when it was going to happen because everybody would have a different allotment, it would be different for everyone - the way hair colour varies, or fingerprints. I could be in the middle of a story, and then run out of words, and it'd never be finished. I could be using up the words I need for that story writing this."

Learn more about this author, Tom Knapp.
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