M Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with M. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?”
Source: Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978
“Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual.”
“Most writers begin with accounts of their first home, their family, and the town, often from quite a hostile point of view-love/hate, let's say. In a way, this stepping outside, in an attempt to judge enough to create a duplicate of it, makes you an outsider. . . . I think it's healthy for a writer to feel like an outsider. If you feel like an insider you get committed to a partisan view, you begin to defend interests, so you wind up not really empathizing with all mankind.”
“Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.”
“Most writers can write, most rock 'n rollers cannot.”
“Most writers do similar things in their minds. It's how the mind works, basically.”
“Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.”
“Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.”
“Most writers flourish greatly on a simple, healthy routine with occasional time off for gaiety.”
Source: Becoming a Writer
“Most writers have very little that's important or valuable to offer; most of them are just repeating each other.”
“Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.”
“Most writers I know move back and forth between the rational and the intuitive, though there are some who approach writing very rationally, and others who claim not to think their work through.”
“Most writers in Mexico have had posts as ambassadors, secretaries - that is no longer the case. Now a writer can live off writing. He has an audience: there are publishing houses, there are newspapers - so the situation is not as terrible as it used to be when there were no means and he had to go into government service, be an ambassador or a cabinet minister, etc. So, things are changing in the sense that the civil society is now the protagonist. The writer therefore occupies a different position, but no less influential than in the past, in a new, democratic society.”
“Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.”
Source: The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh
“Most writers like to maintain some sort of anonymity. For me, making videos was an assault.”
“Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual.”
“Most writers need to write. I write for money, really. If I won the lottery, I would never write another word. I would rather read.”
“Most writers on the subject seem to agree that the typical working mathematician is a Platonist on weekdays and a formalist on Sundays.”
“Most writers or performers walk around with the notion in their head that - a paranoid worry that maybe people don't like them.”
“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.”
“Most writers seem to prefer the morning, or they feel at their best in the morning. Ideas are popping into your head while you're in the shower. And that's true for me, as well.”
“Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.”
“Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'”
“Most writers steal a good thing when they can, and when 'Tis safely got 'Tis worth the winning. The worst of 't is we now and then detect em, they ever dream that we suspect em.”
Source: A Sicilian Story ; with Diego de Montilla and Other Poems
“Most writers stick to what they know. The black experience is our experience, so it's not that challenging for us. That's why sometimes you'll see writers that start off telling black stories, but later branch out into other material. People say they "sell out." No, they evolve as writers.”
“Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.”
“Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.”
Source: There Was a Country: A Memoir
“Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally.”
“Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.”
“Most writers write from fandom, fantasy, or fiction. I write from experience, truth, and my heart.”
“Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.”
“Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.”
Source: Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem
“Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"”
“Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's obsessed with anti-mythology, ... There's not a lot of realistic, observant writing about the West right now.”
“Most writers, I'm afraid, live very boring lives sitting in front of a screen. However, having said that: every writer puts a bit of themselves into the characters to bring them alive.”
“Most writers, in my opinion, are dysfunctional derelicts.”
“Most writers, including myself, had to endure a lot of rejections before finally getting published. You could wallpaper a sizeable bathroom with the rejection slips I have received. Don't ever give up!”
“Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.”
“Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.”
“Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.”
“Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.”
“Most x-rated films are advertised as "adult entertaintment,"for "mature adults," when in reality they are juvenile entertainment for immature and insecure people.”
“Most years, if you were to ask me how much I make, the genuine answer is that I have no clue. I usually find out the answer to that question once a year, at tax time, when my accountant tells me.”
“Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.”
“Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.”
Source: Poiesis: aspects of contemporary poetic activity
“Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.”
Source: Emily's Quest
“Most young men fell instantly in love with her when she was not dressed in rags and covered in stains, as the serving girl was beautiful, with black eyes, pale golden hair, and skin of a darker gold, a strange but irresistible combination.”
Source: Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
“Most young people are or will soon enough be workers. They can help to energize and radicalize the workers' movement. And what revolution has ever succeeded without youth?”
“Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more bureaucrats micromanaging their lives, and far more rules and restrictions on how things can be done.”
Source: Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say
“Most young people have tremendous respect for older people's views.”