Good writing occurs because a writer passionately desires to say something. . . .
Students do not need more abstract advice about how to write.
They need somehow to have their feelings kindled.

—X.J. Kennedy

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I once stayed in a hotel, next door to a well-known writer.
He never talked about writing.
Each night I heard his typewriter,
hour after hour,
past midnight.
Everyone else in the hotel was asleep.
The sound of that machine reminds me, still,
that what writers do is write.

—Richard Bach

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If there is a secret about writing,
I haven’t found it yet.
All I know is to sit down,
clear your mind,
hang in.

—Mary McGrory

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Writing is most of all an exercise in determination,
first to get the job done,
second to get the job done right.

—Tom Clancy

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No iron can stab the heart with such force
as a period put just at the right place.

—Isaac Babel

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If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing.

—Benjamin Franklin

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