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Writers Quotes

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Writers Quotes

“When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?”

LifeWritingAgeDeathTimeRegretOld AgeWritersCharles Dickens
Book:Drood
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“Being a writer humbles me, so it’s good for me. My ego needs it. It is humbling to accept criticism. It is humbling to recognize when something you’ve written isn’t understood or embraced to the extent that you’d hoped. It is humbling to admit when your expenses exceed your profits. All that is true even when you are consistently surprised by well-received efforts, monetary gains, and extravagant praise. Through all of it, I learned to see myself as just another voice in the choir— one that is hopeful, vulnerable, and faultily human, not superior or inferior to anyone. So, yes, it’s definitely been good for me.”

WritingHumilityEgoWritersWriters On Writing
Author:D,K. Sanz
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“Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office—the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement—is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”

LifeRealityHappinessFutureDepressionPerceptionSmokingWritersAssistancePublicityMeasurementVirtuesMentorshipSelf DelusionAntidepressantsHoroscopesUncertainty PrincipleWerner HeisenbergSoothsayingBupropionHays Office
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“If you call yourself an "authoress" on your Facebook profile, you suck at life. You are stupid and your children are ugly. It doesn't matter if you're just trying to be cute and original. You're not. You are about as original as all those other witless twits "writing" the one millionth shitty Fifty Shades clone. Or maybe you're trying to show your 2000 fake Facebook "friends" that you are an empowered feminist who will not stand for sexist terminology. But you're not showing people that you are fighting the good fight, you're showing people that you are a sheep, who's trying just a little too hard to ride the current wave of idiotic political correctness. The word "author" is no more gender-discrimination than the word "person." Do you call yourself a personess? No, of course not, because then you might as well wear a sign around your neck that says, "Hello, I'm a retard.”

HumorFunnyFeminismFeministStupidityDiscriminationAuthorWriterWritersSexismAnnoyingOriginalityGreyWriters On WritingFunny QuotesPersonHumorous QuotesAuthorsStupid PeoplePolitical CorrectnessPolitically CorrectFacebookRetardedFacebook QuotesFifty ShadesFifty Shades Of GreyAnnoying PeopleSheepleGender DiscriminationPolitically Correct CultureAuthoressUnoriginalFifty Shades Of Grey Humor
Author:Oliver Markus
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“An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good." In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it.”

WritingReadingBooksThoughtWritersEditingFreedom Of ThoughtRevision
Book:The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself
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“Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else’s.”

PracticeConfidenceWritersWriting ProcessWriting CraftNothing To Say
Book:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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“The brain is more like a muscle and less like a storage area. If you really want to be a writer, you should want to write a lot. If you want to write a lot, then you need to be in training. You are preparing to run marathons, not emptying a suitcase. Learning new languages, acquiring new vocabulary, keeping yourself in various forms of constant logocentric discipline is one of the best things you can do. And language acquisition is nothing if not logocentric discipline.”

WritingPracticeDisciplineTrainingWritersLanguage LearningLogophileVocabulary Building
Book:Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
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“It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to.”

WritingInternetDisciplineSocial MediaOnlineWritersTime ManagementProcrastination
Author:Sara Sheridan
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“If you want to be a good writer, internalize the good writers; absorb them; integrate with their souls; embrace their minds; mingle with their life stories; in short, merge with them, lose yourself in them!”

WritingMehmet Murat Ildan QuotesEmbraceWriterWritersTurkish LiteratureTurkish QuotesTurkish WritersMehmet Murat Ildan QuotationsIldan Wise SayingsTurkish Wisdom WordsTurkish PlaywrightsTurkish QuotationsTurkish AuthorsIldan WisdomIldan WordsGood WritersAbsorbMingleInternalizeMergeGood Writer
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“she was completely whole and yet never fully complete”

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Book:Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles
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