Best method & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“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.”

Way Writing Kind Has Beens Ideas Different Found Common Successful Succeed Elements Determination Method Persistence Overwhelming Different Kinds Determination To Succeed

Book:For Writers Only: Inspiring Thoughts on the Exquisite Pain and Heady Joy of the Writing Life from Its Great Practitioners

Source: For Writers Only: Inspiring Thoughts on the Exquisite Pain and Heady Joy of the Writing Life from Its Great Practitioners

“GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.”

Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World

“Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.”

Men Writing Conversation Ordinary Understood Method

Book:The spectator

Source: The spectator

“Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing that shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

Writing Believe Humans May Persons Made Easy Secret Discovery Method Resolve Investigation Ingenuity Epiphany Easy Things Ciphers

Book:Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition

Source: Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition

“Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education... reading, analysis, and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principle way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.”

“An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.”

“How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.”

Writing Humans Pieces Method Affair Vices Obscurity Subtlety Degenerates Scientific Method Meaninglessness Unqualified Understatement

Author:Eric Hoffer

“Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.”

Writing Wells Mean Doe Said Motivational Artist Order Forget Becoming Method Technique Grammar

Author:Andrei Tarkovsky

“Kitty Kelley's method, already perfected in her unauthorised and unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan, is to write bestsellers that take what she describes as an 'unblinking look' at their subjects - which might, of course, mean that her eyes are permanently open or permanently closed... the result is a work so bad that Britons cannot realise how fortunate they are in being unable to buy it. The great mistake with this book is not that it has been published in Britain, but that it has actually been published anywhere else.”

Writing Looks Mean Has Beens Book Might Eye Courses Language Results Mistake Subjects Method Fortunate Britain Realising Frank Her Eyes Biographies Nancy Great Mistakes Kitties Britons

Author:David Cannadine

“The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.”

People Writing Secret Forever Streets Car Judging Wall Police Method Prison Surface Cells Jail Covered Cop Prison Cells Police Cars

Author:Neil Gaiman

“My writing method is to sit in a very small hut absolutely alone. I write in total solitude. And I write on paper, on hand, and then it gets typed. Normal for me.”

Writing Hands Solitude Normal Paper Method Huts

Author:Sally Potter

“Few things in life are less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed.”

People Writing Trying Ends Groups Advantage Method Sentences Collaboration Efficient Things In Life

Author:Scott Adams

“I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.”

Thinking Way Writing Littles Real Character School Bits Acting Novel Taught College Little Bit High School Connections Method Method Acting Real Connection

Author:Jeffrey Eugenides

“I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.”

Should Writing Believe Method Don't Believe Proselytizing

Author:John Irving

“My favorite method of encryption is chunking revolutionary documents inside a mess of JPEG or MP3 code and emailing it off as an "image" or a "song." But besides functionality, code also possesses literary value. If we frame that code and read it through the lens of literary criticism, we will find that the past hundred years of modernist and postmodernist writing have demonstrated the artistic value of similar seemingly arbitrary arrangements of letters.”

“My book, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research is about how researchers use this method and how to write up their oral history projects so that audiences can read them. It's important that researchers have many different tools available to study people's lives and the cultures we live in. I think oral history is a most needed and uniquely important strategy.”

People Thinking Writing Important Book Different Use Culture Understanding Audience Study Needed Projects Research Tools Method Strategy Available Researchers Qualitative Oral History

Author:Patricia Leavy

“There are many important books on oral history. My book was the launch title in the Understanding Qualitative Research series with Oxford University Press. I think what makes my book and all of the series books unique is the emphasis on writing instruction for researchers who want to use the method being described.”

“Students are often taught when to use a particular method and how to use it, but not how to effectively write up their research plan and then later their research results.”

Writing Use Results Plans Students Taught Particular Research Method

Author:Patricia Leavy

“When you're writing a book that is going to be a narrative with characters and events, you're walking very close to fiction, since you're using some of the methods of fiction writing. You're lying, but some of the details may well come from your general recollection rather than from the particular scene. In the end it comes down to the readers. If they believe you, you're OK. A memoirist is really like any other con man; if he's convincing, he's home. If he isn't, it doesn't really matter whether it happened, he hasn't succeeded in making it feel convincing.”

“I'm not a method actor, I don't write my character's history or all those kinds of things. I'm more about the 90 percent of the brain that is subconscious. I like to just pick certain pieces, let it soak in, and then let it kind of emerge out.”

Writing Kind Character Certain Actors Brain Pieces Picks Percent Method Subconscious

Author:Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

“A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.”

Thinking Knows Writing Simple Stupid Direct Method Critics Sentences Defects

Book:If This Isn't Nice What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By

Source: If This Isn't Nice What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By

“I have a strong spiritual commitment, and I try to express that in my work. Salvation cannot be worked out in human terms. The point of my writing is to touch upon the systematics of prayer and on how we arrive at a method of achieving spiritual coherence in our lives.”

Writing Trying Humans Spiritual Strong Term Prayer Our Lives Achieve Commitment Method Salvation Coherence

Author:Richard Grossman

“Method acting has had a major influence both in writing through the eyes of other people, and seeing through the eyes of other people, trying to address different ideas in a way that would go beyond preaching to the choir.”

People Way Writing Trying Ideas Different Eye Acting Seeing Influence Majors Method Addresses Preaching Choir Through The Eyes Different Ideas Method Acting Preaching To The Choir

Author:Jello Biafra

“When I got home from The Ozzfest in September 2000 with Methods... I just locked myself in my house and I started writing.”

Writing Home House Method Locked September

Author:Tommy Lee

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

People Way Writing Book Today Church Poor Clear Method Oneself Creeds Fundamentalism Dissatisfied Book Writing Relativism Praiseworthy Faith Based

Author:Walter Benjamin

“It's funny because my main awkwardness around writing the song had little to do with the method.”

Writing Littles Song Method Awkwardness

Author:Erin McKeown

“I tend to work most often from the method of ignoring any ritualistic writing for long periods of time, and then I'll spend three straight weeks writing for 12 hours a day and just going through the motions with my worldly business because the compulsion to write descends upon me like a kind of madness. I don't mean to be dramatic, but it feels that way when it strikes.”

Way Feels Writing Kind Mean Long Three Hours Week Periods Madness Method Strikes Dramatic Worldly Compulsion Long Periods Of Time

Author:Kevin Keck

“Sometimes it's binge eating as a method to handle emotional pain. I'll also write very sporadically - music, lyrics - to identify the problem. There are a few cathartic processes I've alternated randomly. There's no default. Each emotional experience elicits a different, possibly new response.”

Writing Different Sometimes Problem Pain Process Emotional Eating Method Response Handle Emotional Pain Default Binge Cathartic Binge Eating

Author:Brendan Dooling

“Sometimes you start flowing and shits starts adding on to whatever cipher you're dealing with. Meanwhile you got all of these thoughts in your head and you don't get enough time to put them down. That's another reason I started writing from the last word to the front word. It's methods to the madness. Sometimes I can't understand it or explain it but it is what it is.”

Writing I Can Sometimes Reason Enough Lasts Fronts Madness Method Last Words Enough Time It Is What It Is Ciphers Thoughts In Your Head

Author:Rakim

“I think, there are a couple of songs. I'm really proud of How far I'll Go. I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house to write those lyrics. I wanted to get to my angstiest possible place. So I went method on that.”

Thinking Writing Wanted Song House Parent Childhood Proud Couple Method Locked Bedroom

Author:Lin-Manuel Miranda

“I write when I can. I have no set writing practices, or times, or methods. I write when I'm not doing other things - in the odd times when I'm traveling, or in hotels, or when I get time to be alone with my thoughts.”

Writing I Can Practice Method Odd Hotel My Thoughts

Author:Allison Joseph

“The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don't typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it's using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.”

Way Writing Different Used Song Records Type Creating Picks Tools Method Instruments Guitar Best Way Piano Acoustics Electronics Acoustic Guitar

Author:Serj Tankian

“I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.”

People Writing Trying Different Method Different Peoples

Author:Paul Weller

“My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.”

People World Way Writing Sometimes Stories Body Language Cities Quality Becoming Involved Weight Method Structure Sticks Heavenly Remove Inertia Heavenly Bodies Subtraction

Author:Italo Calvino

“A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.”

Men Writing Individual Reader Solitude Method Oneself Bread Comical

Book:The gaze of Orpheus, and other literary essays

Source: The gaze of Orpheus, and other literary essays

“And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.”

Way Writing Seems Together Artist Method Significant Block Explanation Fancy Explaining

Book:Collected Stories

Source: Collected Stories

“Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.”

Writing Said Enough Home Girl My Own Known Moral Fire Eating Murder Method Committed Intellect Finished Manners Limbs Critique Orphan Asylums This Girl Physique Asparagus

Book:Right Ho, Jeeves

Source: Right Ho, Jeeves

“Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.”

Writing Past History Method Writing History

Book:Criticisms, reflections, and maxims of Goethe: Tr., with an introduction

Source: Criticisms, reflections, and maxims of Goethe: Tr., with an introduction

“Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.”

Source: The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose

“Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.”

Writing Easy Hours Acting Steps Novel Method Drinking Cocktails Method Acting

Author:Bret Easton Ellis

“Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.”

Writing Humanity Perfect Animal Dangerous Cat Method Companion Avoidance Kitten Funny Cat Herding Cats

Author:Dan Greenburg

“If you feel yourself to be a full member in the world, you probably won't turn to writing, because other methods of communication, more direct methods, will strike you as being more available.”

Ifs World Feels Writing Turns Communication Members Direct Method Available Strikes

Author:Margot Livesey

“The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.”

Feels Writing Matter Reading Language Education Teaching Subjects Students Materials Percent Method Cooperative Learning

Author:Noam Chomsky

“There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.”

Want Writing Kind Helping Method What You Want All Kinds

Book:On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Source: On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

“Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.”

People Ifs Writing Use Kids Secret Type Method Pens Toes

Author:Sinclair Lewis

“We exponents of horror do much better than those Method actors. We make the unbelievable believable. More often than not, they make the believable unbelievable.”

Writing Actors Horror Method Unbelievable Believable Exponents

Author:Vincent Price

“I work fitfully, in hope rather than in expectation, invent methods which last a week, and fill notebooks with tiny, illegible writing which often defies my own attempts to decipher it.”

Writing Lasts My Own Week Expectations Method Tiny Notebook Decipher

Author:Anthony Minghella

“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”

Writing Made Use Reality Form Class Taken Example Expression Offers Method Factories Realist Literary Works

Book:Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic

Source: Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic

“I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.”

Writing Children Form Risk Materials Models Connections Method Memoir Predecessors Processing

Author:Rachel Cusk

“Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?”

Writing Humans Said Facts Artist Human Beings Deals Scientist Method Recognizing Human Experience

Book:Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: A Death in the Family, & Shorter Fiction

Source: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: A Death in the Family, & Shorter Fiction

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Method Quotes