There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
—H. L. Mencken 

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.
—Patricia Fuller 

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.
—Russell Lynes 

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like, “What about lunch?”
—Winnie the Pooh

Substitute “damn” every time you're inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
—Mark Twain 

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
—Abraham Lincoln

There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
—William Zinsser

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
—Truman Capote

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
—Stephen King

All I know about grammar is its power.
—Joan Didion

I’ve reached that final moment of editing a book—the one where the text manifests as a living breathing person and starts slugging me in the face.
—Richard Due  

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
—Agatha Christie

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
—Thomas Mann 

I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again.
—Oscar Wilde

Is “anal retentive” hyphenated?
—H. G. Schmidt

The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
—George Bernard Shaw

Never, never, never give up.
—Winston Churchill