Best self & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Every decade of my life I attempted to write a novel. But I had nothing to say. I was far too self-absorbed, and now I realize I was writing for others, so that they'd applaud me, see my genius, tell me how wonderful I am, or be jealous of my success.”

Writing Self Realizing Novel Wonderful Genius Decades Jealous Self Absorbed Being Jealous

Author:Louise Penny

“I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.”

Writing Book Self Adventure Reserved Many Friends Self Contained Misanthrope

Author:Ian Rankin

“The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.”

“To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about our sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of our discouragement-what we glimpse in our dreams-our despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world.”

“Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.”

Source: Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler

“Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Stills Self Bigs Remember Memories Wind Reader Findings Our Family Theme Vivid Incidents Our Memories Saga Self Contained

Book:Writing about Your Life: A Journey Into the Past

Source: Writing about Your Life: A Journey Into the Past

“Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris.”

Thinking Needs Writing Persons Self Would Be Walks Fiction Ignorance Equal Tradition Tasks Lifetime Library Average Genuine Genre Novelists Arrogance Bookstores Average Person Hubris

Author:Laura Lippman

“Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.”

Ifs Writing Mind Self Used Turns Evil Chance Stupid Beats Criticize Stamps Indulge Inadequate Indulge In Epithet

Author:Gail Carson Levine

“All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say?”

Writing Doe Self Novel Lists Exploration Groceries Grocery Lists

Author:Steven Saylor

“Being a rock musician is already like ego-tripping hardcore. You're self-consumed, and you're always thinking. It's really easy to say, "I'm going to write a song about this situation, and when I'm done, everyone will care." To everybody else, that's ego-tripping.”

Thinking Writing Self Done Care Song Easy Situation Rocks Ego Musician Consumed Rock Music Hardcore Always Thinking Tripping Rock Musicians

Author:Ryan Adams

“...But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution....And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.”

“There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.”

Writing Self Fall Again And Again Parody

Author:Tobias Wolff

“Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.”

Writing Self Employment Schedules

Author:Lois Lowry

“You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.”

Way Want Writing Self States Order Situation Poverty Constant

Author:Tom Waits

“Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'”

Writing Persons Self Equal Founders Evident

Author:Edward Snowden

“Some writing is a really nice solitary process, in a way, because you can be a little self-conscious around other people. If it's just you, and you're at your favorite piano, or whatever instrument, and you feel comfortable, then somehow, I always feel like it's opening a door and letting whatever is to pass through pass.”

People Ifs Way Feels Writing Littles Self Process Nice Doors Comfortable Conscious Instruments Opening Piano Solitary Self Conscious Really Nice Your Favorite

Author:Marketa Irglova

“I had self-doubt about whether my story was interesting to people. I didn't want to write something that was anecdotal. It was important to me that people would get something out of my book. I want people to read it and say, "Now I don't feel so alone," or "I'm going to remember that next time I'm being an asshole."”

People Want Feels Writing Important Book Self Stories Remember Next Interesting Doubt Next Time Self-doubt

Author:Lizz Winstead

“Writing is an outward expression of instinctive insight that must be summoned from the vastly deep of our mysterious selves. Therefore, it cannot be taught; indeed, it cannot even be summoned; it can only be permitted.”

Writing Self Taught Expression Insight Mysterious

Author:William Hughes Mearns

“Constant reading will pull you into a place - a mind-set, if you like the phrase - where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.”

Ifs Writing Mind Self Reading Consciousness Constant Phrases Self Consciousness Mind Set

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.”

Should Writing Kind Littles Self Wanted Song Felt Understood Should Have Reeds

Author:Lou Reed

“Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.”

Want Writing Trying Self Seeing Paint Portraits Self Portrait

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)

“I met a young woman the other day, and she said, what advice would you have for a writer, and I said it would be to work every day... Your job is to write. The rest of it will take care of itself. But, generally, it seems ... you know how that is, you meet people and they have a talent for self-promotion. Those are the pushy people. And you know their writing's not going to be any good, because that's not their talent.”

People Knows Writing Said Self Seems Would Be Care Jobs Young Know How Advice Talent Mets Take Care Young Women Promotion Self Promotion Pushy

Author:David Sedaris

“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.”

Writing Self Bigs Deals Doubt Impossible Editing Big Deal Self-doubt

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“I've always had a great love of music since childhood. It changes every day.. every time you write, it's a new experience. It's a self expression.”

Writing Self Childhood Expression Great Love Self Expression Music Love New Experiences

Author:Edgar Winter

“Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical without being self- conscious: it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this. I was not totally convinced by Lurie's musical abilities, with regard to his proposed opera, but that is my sole complaint.”

“If I could write a letter to my teenage self I'd probably say something like: "You ain't gonna believe what will become of you."”

Ifs Writing Believe Self Like You Letters If I Could Teenage

Author:Antony Sher

“I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs.”

“There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.”

Ifs Writing Book Self Jobs Easy Internet Discipline Down And Hanging Out Mail Subconscious Employed Surfing Surfing The Internet Hanging Out With Friends

Author:Charles de Lint

“Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.”

Knows Inspirational Writing Art Self Whole Eye Literature Names Difficult Know How Sacrifice Crossings Self Sacrifice Superfluous Ruthlessness

Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin

“Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction.”

“I'm thinking of writing a children's story about a leaf on a tree who arrogantly insists he's a self-made, independent leaf. Then one day a fierce wind blows him off his branch and to the ground below. As his life slowly ebbs away, he looks up at the magnificent old tree that had been his home and realizes that he had never been on his own. His entire life he had been part of something bigger and more beautiful than anything he could have imagined. In a blinding flash, he awakens from the delusion of self. Then an arrogant, self-centered kid rakes him up and bags him.”

“Well, my father Kingsley Amis was a writer and it seemed natural to start writing in my late teens. I think it was good that I began when I was young and bold and foolish, otherwise I'd have become too self-conscious and aware of the weight of not having written anything yet.”

Thinking Writing Wells Self Young Father Natural Written Late Conscious Weight Foolish Teens Self Conscious

Author:Martin Amis

“There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.”

Ifs Should Writing Persons Self Enough Expression Reader Aim Seven Patient Self Expression

Book:The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

Source: The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

“I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.”

People Men Want Should Writing Stills Book Self Reason Whole Dream Hate Turns Animal Emotion Horror Drug Destruction Mad Curse Nerves Pale Apostles Hate Me Self Destruction Self Destruct

Author:Leonid Andreyev

“As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books? "Self.”

Writing Book Self Selfishness Hearted Cheques

Book:A Shadow Passes

Source: A Shadow Passes

“I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Has Beens Self Artist Quality Gone Pieces Forgiven Could Have Been Defining Symphony Self Deprecation

Author:Dmitri Shostakovich

“Show people your stuff, listen carefully to their responses, but ultimately don't value anyone's opinion above your own. Be influenced by writers you dislike as well as writers you like. Read their stuff to figure out what's wrong. Find a balance between the confidence that allows you continue, and the self-critical facility that enables you to improve. Get the balance wrong on either side, and you're screwed.”

People Writing Wells Self Shows Values Stuff Sides Opinion Figures Balance Response Critical Dislike Facility

Author:Alex Garland

“When you write a novel, there’s a level at which you are much more revealing about who you are because you’re less self-conscious about how you’re presenting yourself. You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it’s all coming from you.”

Writing Self Levels Novel Conscious Who You Are Leaving Dna Revealing Self Conscious Presenting Presenting Yourself

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.”

Thinking Knows Want Writing Littles Persons Made Book Self Home Practice Written Relate Therapy Revelations Hammers Therapists Disinterested Aloof Self Revelation

Author:Irvin D. Yalom

“If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.”

Ifs Writing Wells Self Reality Able Universe Objectives Observation Description Observing Boundless

Author:Gao Xingjian

“Anarchism is in reality the ideal of political and social science, and also the ideal of religion. It is the ideal to which Jesus Christ looked forward. Christ founded no church, established no state, gave practically no laws, organized no government and set up no external authority, but he did seek to write on the hearts of men God's law and make them self-legislating.”

Men Writing Heart Self States Reality Government Law Political Jesus Social Christ Church Authority Jesus Christ Ideals Organized Anarchism Social Science

Author:R. Heber Newton

“I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.”

Thinking Writing Children Made Book Self My Own Company Solitude Degrees Glad Self Reliance Reliance Conditioning Writing A Book Only Child

Author:Alan Hollinghurst

“The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off.”

People Writing Self States Hands Next United Steps United States Wonderful Independence Historical Irony Mars Evident Declaration Declaration Of Independence Next Steps Pissed Off Colonists

Author:Eric Idle

“Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.”

Writing Book Self Use Values Found Highest My Time Publishing Promoting

Author:Barry Eisler

“But when I saw the cursive grace of Guido Rahr's fly line writing prayers I couldn't read to the river gods of Outer Mongolia, I knew my name was written there too. Fly fishing was going to be my version of my father's sport, my nod to my Scottish ancestors and to my self, and to the fish crazed part of America I had claimed as my own.”

Writing Self America Father Names Sports Lines My Own Prayer Saws Grace Written Sea Rivers Fishes Versions Boat Lakes Fishing Ancestor Scottish Fly Fishing Mongolia Cursive Guidos

Author:Jessica Maxwell

“If you become very self-conscious about what you are doing, you kill. You kill the character. Then it doesn't work. You have to come from a sincere place. And you don't think too much. I don't go to the hotel and I start thinking what am I going to say tomorrow and start writing things down.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Self Character Too Much Tomorrow Conscious Hotel Sincere Self Conscious Doing You Writing Things Down

Author:Antonio Banderas

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Self Quotes