Henry Miller wrote his first book, Clipped Wings, in 1922 while on a three week vacation from his day job at Western Union or Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America as he calls it. Miller tells about writing his first novel in Tropic of Capricorn:

``I wrote it straight off, five, seven, sometimes eight thousand words a day. I thought that a man, to be a writer, must do at least five thousand words a day... I didn’t know a thing about writing. I was scared shitless... I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it... Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing one’s own name. I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you. Perhaps one does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making people believe.’’

As John Grisham pointed out, no one is more anonymous than a writer in a nation of people who don't read

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.
Ray Bradbury

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
E. L. Doctorow

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Anonymous

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
Harlan Ellison

You can't say, I won't write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then… you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.
Dorothy C. Fontana ( This reminds me also of when I promise I will eat better, but just start tomorrow.)

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Eugene Ionesco ( I love this one it's so true for me, it's all engulfing)

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work, when it feels like all you're managing, is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Stephen King

Writing is a fairly lonely business unless you invite people in to watch you do it, which is often distracting and then have to ask them to leave.
Marc Lawrence

( I need to try this) At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern, and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.
H. P. Lovecraft

The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.
Ken MacLeod

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
Somerset Maugham ( I agree or else don't eat. I do not want another job to support me This is my only job or I starve)

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write. ( omg!! I so believe this "writer's block" is made up. You are not a writer if you cant write.)
Terry Pratchett

Writing energy is like anything else. The more you put in, the more you get out.
Richard Reeves

God sells us all things at the price of the labor.
Leonardo da Vinci ( Same as above quote)

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.
P. G. Wodehouse ( I mean really, writing, is my dream job, since I was little, I can't say I ever have liked other people or working with them, for them. But I never had any faith I could think and support myself. I do now. I have no choice. I like myself. I really do enjoy my thoughts. My dad is the same way he goes to his office after all his employees have left for the day, he is brilliant too. He just wrote me to tell me he is climbing a mountian, by himself, today in Colorado.. I think that is what he said)

I got to thinking about the point in every freelancer's life where he has to decide whether he wants to A, have a social life, and do art in his spare time, or B, do art, and have a social life in his spare time. It has always seemed to me that if you have any hope of making a living as an artist – writer, musician, whatever – you absolutely must learn to tell people to leave you alone, and to mean it, and to eject them from your life if they don't respect that. This is necessary not because your job is more important than anyone else's – it isn't – but because a great many people will think of you as not having a job. 'Oh, how wonderful – you can work whenever you want to!' Well, yes, to a point, but generally 'whenever you want to' had better be most of the time, or else you won't have a roof over your head.
Poppy Z. Brite ( I have always loved Poppy, a goth writer, Anne rice style, and agree with her, it's write and write damn good or else don't eat)

Writing is its own reward.
Henry Miller ( What is my ends? I want to create something so wonderful. Oh I would just die. I want money too, alot of it)

In my experience, the best creative work is never done when one is unhappy.
Albert Einstein ( right meaning I need to fast or eat really well because I am happiest when lightest)

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.
Jules Feifer ( yes, I mention this too, I write to conquer my past and relive the way it was meant to be my life as well, as be better. If I could have any life and have any friends, my book would be that)

A man who is a genius and doesn't know it, probably isn't.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec ( I know I am, because I have the will, and I had a experience one night as a kid, where I was woken up, my window open and leaves blew across the floor, I felt a brain explosion, and I distinctly knew that I was gifted, and very special, that's all I was given something somehow...)

Writing is a lot easier if you have something to say
Sholem Asch ( I do have something to say, I have a moral code I want to show)

Always make sure you are right and then - go for it.
David Crockett

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.
Stephen King ( Hmm interesting I used to read a book a day, I need to start that again)

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard ( yes, today in my story when I was working on character backgrounds, when they were in high school or college, I found myself a little stuck a little bored, because so much of it is from my own cooked food past, then I had the idea that I cannot make this, even a little depressing or boring for me, because it will bore readers, I have to find out why I am uninspired here and fix it, so I chose to relive the scenes which and make it the way I would have liked to have lived, if gone back to those years..uplifted me completely)

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville ( oh yes, yes)

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt ( yes, sometimes I need to research stuff before moving on, then I say, no I can keep writing)

If you don't know it, don't write it.
Darrell Schweitzer ( I say, go out and learn it, then write it)

You are what you read.
Esko Valtaoja ( wow, this is true of my past, I have done everything writers have written about, I was a drama queen)

First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him.
Ray Bradbury

The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.
Robert Oppenheimer ( True have your characters do what you want to show)

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Robert Frost ( I am sure i do not want to cry but be inspired)

The virtue of books is to be readable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson ( I agree, it goes with the other quote that easy reading is hard work)

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.
Robin McKinley ( yes, I write for myself to entertain and totally impress and amaze)

Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write my books so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded!
Sidney Sheldon ( good point to do this at the end of a chapter, leave some sort of suspense, great idea)

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein( right, the mob knows nothing... it's only single men working alone against everyone, who change the world, then the mob takes that over..)

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
Isaac Asimov ( hmm interesting good point, same as you don't write you don't eat)

You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Ray Bradbury

The only way to learn to write is to write.
Peggy Teeters

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby ( right AR says that when you have a group deciding, you will always get an average, medicore choice made)

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
Steve Martin
...star and co-writer of "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"

There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the only rule is this: do what works. Almost everything has been tried and found to succeed for somebody. The methods, even the ideas of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence-an overwhelming determination to succeed.
Sophy Burnham