Top 50 James Scott Bell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.”

— James Scott Bell

2. “Get a PHD No, not a doctoral degree. I mean a PHD attitude: Poor, Hungry and Driven.”

— James Scott Bell

3. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay.”

— James Scott Bell

4. “Write like you’re in love. Edit like you’re in charge.”

— James Scott Bell

5. “The most important rule: Do not, I repeat, do not censor yourself in any way. Leave your editorial mind out of the loop. Just let the ideas come pouring out in any way, shape, or form they want to. Do not judge anything.”

— James Scott Bell

6. “Every hour you spend writing is an hour you don’t spend worrying about your writing.”

— James Scott Bell

7. “Superb historical romance, with a spiritual theme woven seamlessly throughout. I much enjoyed The Covered Deep and look forward to more from its author!”

— James Scott Bell

Featured in: Romance Quotes

8. “The best way to predict the future is to create it. You do that by study.”

— James Scott Bell

9. “Good writers are good readers.”

— James Scott Bell

10. “But love don’t make things nice, it ruins everything, it breaks your heart, it makes things a mess. We’re not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!”

— James Scott Bell

11. “Structure is translation software for your imagination.”

— James Scott Bell

12. “Don’t give up. I don’t think any other advice works. Writing is one of those things where you just have to do it. There will be far more people to discourage you than to encourage you. The time never comes to you, the inspiration doesn’t come to you. You just sit down and do it.” – James Lee Burke.”

— James Scott Bell

13. “You must want it enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft – then you can add all the genius you like.” – Phyllis Whitney.”

— James Scott Bell

14. “There’s a perilous word fiction writers need to watch out for. The word is ‘had.’”

— James Scott Bell

15. “Status, worry and comparison are ways to madness, not victory.”

— James Scott Bell

16. “A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.”

— James Scott Bell

17. “The Care Package is a relationship the Lead has with someone else, in which he shows his concern, through word or deed, for that character’s well being.”

— James Scott Bell

18. “The thing I do at the beginning is a “voice journal,” a free form doc that is the character speaking to me. I just work on it until I start to hear different from my own, or the other characters.”

— James Scott Bell

19. “Think of it as the Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.”

— James Scott Bell

20. “Other men’s sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our back.”

— James Scott Bell

21. “If you can write each day, do it, and meet a quota. Minimum 350 words a day. A baboon can do 350 words a day. Don’t be shown up by a baboon.”

— James Scott Bell

22. “Know your death stakes! This is going to be crucial in order for you to write your novel from the middle.”

— James Scott Bell

23. “Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.”

— James Scott Bell

24. “If you up your skill and take more chances, your odds of success increase.”

— James Scott Bell

25. “Inside you there are universes. You contain multitudes.”

— James Scott Bell

26. “My philosophy on writing books is that if you learn only one new thing, or even get a new take on something you already know, it’s worth it.”

— James Scott Bell

27. “It’s quite interesting to note that Townes’s colleagues at Columbia were skeptical of his idea. Niels Bohr, one of the great quantum physicists, and Nobel laureate Isadore Rabi, head of the university’s physics department, told Townes his maser idea would never work and urged him to abandon the project.”

— James Scott Bell

28. “You keep writing because it’s the only way to finish the book.”

— James Scott Bell

29. “Robert Jordan put up his field glasses, shading the lenses carefully with his cupped hands even though there was now no sun to make a glint, and there was the rail of the bridge as clear as though you could reach out and touch it and there was the face of the sentry so clear he could see the sunken cheeks the ash on the cigarette and the greasy shine of the bayonet.”

— James Scott Bell

30. “You don’t always have to render the feelings of your characters, but you must know what they are in every scene. That way, the actions and dialogue will have an organic complexity that breathes life into fiction.”

— James Scott Bell

31. “If you’re still stuck, re-watch Misery and imagine that your number one fan insists that you finish by the end of the month.”

— James Scott Bell

32. “Drive thy business or it will drive thee.” – Benjamin Franklin.”

— James Scott Bell

33. “What I found was a moment where the main character has to figuratively look at himself, as in the mirror. He is confronted with a disturbing truth: change or die.”

— James Scott Bell

34. “A great novel is the record of how a character fights with death.”

— James Scott Bell

35. “Having a Care Package relationship keeps a character from being completely selfish.”

— James Scott Bell

36. “Don’t you love that? One of the greatest scientific innovations of all time just came to Townes as he was sitting on a bench in a park. And then he starts “scratching” it out on paper.”

— James Scott Bell

37. “To make it as a writer you need to be two things: systematic and relentless.”

— James Scott Bell

38. “A quirky, colorful character overstays her welcome after a few chapters, unless trouble comes calling.”

— James Scott Bell

39. “Someone with less talent who works hard often outperforms the gifted.”

— James Scott Bell

40. “The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying.”

— James Scott Bell

41. “Sometimes writing a novel feels about as rewarding as turning a spit in the fires of hell.”

— James Scott Bell

42. “Start by asking if this is writer’s laziness as opposed to writer’s block.”

— James Scott Bell

43. “When our characters show us the full fire of that inner battle, we have the makings of great fiction. For whether the choice is ultimately for honor or dishonor, we will see the consequences and the reader will be instructed without being taught.”

— James Scott Bell

44. “People who read want one of two things: knowledge or entertainment. When you can give them both, so much the better.”

— James Scott Bell

45. “Are you a real writer? Then keep writing. And don’t stop. Ever.”

— James Scott Bell

46. “Keep writing. Get to the end. Don’t allow yourself to abandon the project. You must finish what you write. But what, you ask, if I have a chaotic mess at the end? Celebrate. This is the way it usually is, even for veteran novelists.”

— James Scott Bell

47. “Anyone living in Los Angeles who has opposable thumbs is required to write a screenplay.”

— James Scott Bell

48. “In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.”

— James Scott Bell

49. “When the last dime is gone, I’ll sit on the curb with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook, and start the whole thing all over again.” – Preston Sturges.”

— James Scott Bell

50. “Ernest Hemingway had a rather personal way to describe first drafts. To paraphrase, he said all of them are like, ahem, biological waste.”

— James Scott Bell