“Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.” – Carl Hiaasen

“Writing is the painting of the voice.” – Voltaire

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

“Bad decisions make the best stories.” – Kristen Lamb

“Sometimes doing nothing makes way for everything.” – Hiral Nagda

“This diamond ring doesn’t shine for me anymore.. This diamond ring doesn’t mean what it did before.” – Gary Lewis & The Playboys

“For as long as humans have been conscious, we’ve prized something precious and rare.” – Al Cook, De Beers chief executive

“No great work of art is ever finished.” – Michelangelo

“The first draft is you just telling yourself the story.” – Terry Pratchett

“Writing is an act of faith.” – E.B. White

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill

“If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.” – Terry Brooks

“You can’t be farsighted if the road ahead is blurry.” – Steven Johnson

“No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived. . . ” – Donald Miller

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton

“No-one thinks of himself as a villain.” – Christopher Paolini’s character Oromis in his book Eldest.

“Your first chapter is not a straight horizontal line. It’s a jagged driveway leading up a dark mountainside — and the shadows are full of danger.” — Chuck Wendig

“The Writer is an Explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.” — Rallph Waldo Emerson

“It’s not until you really throw your character into the story that you can genuinely understand who they are .” — Elijah Bynum

“If you . . . don’t put in the work, your book may remain in the muck.” — Nathan Bransford