Sit down and put everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

Colette

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette

There ain’t nothing more to write about and I’m rotten glad of it, because if I’d know’d what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn’t a tackled it.

Mark Twain (from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

There’s a marvellous peace in not publishing….When you publish the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it to yourself.

J.D. Salinger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger

Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader’s desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not much at a time, as your story goes on. That’s called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.

Colin Greenland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Greenland

Good storytelling never gives you four; it gives you two plus two….Don’t give the audience the answer; give the audience the pieces and compel them to conclude the answer. Audiences have an unconscious desire to work for their entertainment. They are rewarded with a sense of thrill and delight when the find the answer themselves.

Bob Peterson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Peterson_(filmmaker)

I never enter a scene until the last possible moment…and as soon as it’s done I get the hell out of there.

William Goldman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goldman

Story, as such, can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely, it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.

E.M Forster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster

I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.

Montesquieu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Emerson_Fosdick

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.

Truman Capote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote