I was skimming through the Net this morning when I came across some of the best quotes that I have read on writing (no points for guessing - the quotes were the brainchild of fellow writers).

I compiled my favourites and are displaying them here for safekeeping...

• "I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort." (Clarice Lispector)

• "The first draft of anything is shit." (Ernest Hemingway)

• "If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write because our culture has no use for it." (Anais Nin)

• "Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person." (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

• "The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it." (Alain Robbe-Grillet)

• "Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." (Franz Kafka)

• "Reading is more important than writing." (Roberto Bolano)

• "We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless." (Vladimir Nabokov)

• "Describe your sorrow and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember." (Rainer Maria Rilke)