“If I have a dry spell … I wait and live harder, eyes, ears, and heart open, and when the productive time comes, it is that much richer.” — Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible Vanity, the most unlearned & uninformed Female who ever dared to be an Authoress.” —Jane Austen, from a letter, 1815

“There is no easy road to successful authorship; it has to be learned by long and patient labor, many disappointments, uncertainties, and trials. Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort and the most enduring.” — Louisa May Alcott, from a letter to a reader, 1878

“Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.” — Vita Sackville-West, in a 1928 letter to Virginia Woolf

“To you I am neither man nor woman — I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me — the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.” — Charlotte Brontë to critics, upon her true identity being uncovered after publication of Jane Eyre in 1847

“I’d like to add some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily … “I don’t exactly want to make people know more … though I now that is the noblest ambition … I’d love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me … to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.” — L.M. Montgomery, from Anne of Avonlea, 1909

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” — Anaïs Nin, author of The Diary of Anaïs Nin

“I am more than ever intent upon following a literary career … I have a purpose in view, a task before me, and if I ma use the word, a passion. For the profession of writing is nothing else but a violent, indestructible passion. When once it enters people’s heads, it never leaves them.” — George Sand, from a letter, 1831

“The first lesson to be learned by a writer is to be able to say, ‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m working.’” — Edna Ferber,  from A Kind of Magic, 1963

“I work from two and a half to three hours a day. I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found.” — Willa Cather, from an interview,1921