"I start a new notebook every year. Notebooks have internal context. Notebooks exist only to think about things, remember things and preserve things for later consideration. This is a notebook." — Warren Ellis.

"The writers who interest me most are those who know a lot about the world and have something to say about it." — Mark Russell.

"There’s two kinds of writers: the ones who freely admit that they write for the love and attention they never got as children, perhaps from an inscrutable parent figure, and damned dirty liars." — Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

"The best advice I can ever give is always the same advice: Commit. That’s the ONLY thing you can entirely control, your commitment to your craft. You cannot control talent, you cannot control market, you cannot control publishers or agents or readers. But you can commit to the writing, and if you do that, and you find a way to stick to it, then you’re doing what is required to be a writer."

— Greg Rucka.

"Writer’s disease: if something affects you, you spend an obscene amount of time picking it apart to find out how it achieved the effect and whether it can be adapted and replicated." — Warren Ellis.

"It's a job. You deal with the impermanence of the freelance writer's life by writing the best you can, picking yourself up the minute you're knocked down, and destroying the life of any bastard who tries to rewrite you. The story's the thing. Anyone who gets between you and it is the enemy, and must be treated as such."

— Warren Ellis.

"Let’s talk about stealing. The problem with metafiction is it’s pretty much just other people’s ideas. And even the best writers can slip into writing fucking fan fiction. And fan fiction is the worst thing a writer can ever do. Because they’re not a writer anymore. So metafiction, to even be passable requires a story, or a point. And I mean a real story and a real point."

— Sean Witzke.

"Writing is not a vocation, in my opinion. Writing is an illness. It’s an addiction. It’s either something you must do, or it’s something that you can do without." — Greg Rucka.

"Todos estamos escribiendo una novela. El 99% no la acaba. De los que la acaban, el 99% no consigue publicarla. De los que la publican, el 99% no la venden. Y dentro del 1% que sí la vende, el 99% no la lee." — Manuel Jabois.

"Digital devices are great work tools. But always keep a notebook and pen or pencil handy. They don’t use batteries, are as instant as use gets, and can help you think in different ways.  And then store them somewhere convenient so that you can sort through them when necessary."

— Warren Ellis.

"I could see central themes being a good thing even you allow the story to become something else, but it’s good to remember what the idea was when you started something. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot in writing is the unspoken deal with the reader—if you get into this I’ll try not to fuck with you."

— Brandon Graham.

"Every time I've taken writing courses or gone to a story summit, the key lesson is always to make your favorite character go through the worst of circumstances." — Jim Krueger.

"My experiences are narrow too. The job of a writer is to expand the POV of the consumer—to put them in shoes they've never been in." — Noelle Stevenson.

"El texto que escribí, reitero, no admite de huevonerías. El mismo respeto que antepongo para escribir, lo demando a la hora de leer." — Fernando Bañuelos.

"Want to know how to get rid of your shit, all that painful shit from the past? Become a writer. Dump your shit on paper. It'll turn to gold." — Ksenia Anske.

"For writers, when it's all said and done, all we have is the quality of the work that has our name on it. Never be afraid to walk away." — Nick Spencer.

"One of the enticing factors of the crime genre is that it is a world right outside your window. You don’t have to take a giant leap of faith to imagine yourself on the wrong side of town with the wrong people. Any type of fantasy or science fiction takes a bit more of a leap. You have to buy the premise. But with crime fiction you know that world exists and you know you are living in it."

— Brian Michael Bendis.

"I will occasionally envy another writer's talent, but that doesn't make me feel bitter—it makes me feel that I need to work harder on my own writing, so I won't have to be so dissatisfied with it." — Gwen Cooper.