Mignon McLaughlin Writing Quotations

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.

There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write.

The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.