Best Writing Fiction Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

“I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.”

Writing Fiction Ambition Academic Writing Fiction

“The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.”

“When I'm writing about reality, I'm writing about death. When I'm writing fiction, I'm writing about life.”

Writing Reality Fiction Writing Fiction

Author:Ralph Peters

“It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.”

Ifs Writing Believe Wells May Enough Order Fiction Cells Observing Fiction Writers Writing Fiction Microscopes

Author:Flannery O'Connor

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

People Writing Has Beens Two Different Hours Fiction Different Peoples Different Place Writing Fiction Drained

Author:Roald Dahl

“Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.”

Writing Remember Fiction Happened Writing Fiction

Book:A Plea for Eros: Essays

Source: A Plea for Eros: Essays

“I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.”

Writing Years Fun Fiction Creative Nonfiction Writing Fiction Creative Nonfiction Fiction And Nonfiction Writing Nonfiction

Author:Judith Krantz

“One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.”

Writing Lying Interesting Levels Fiction Greater Deeper Insight Subconscious Writing Fiction

Author:Francine du Plessix Gray

“Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared.”

Writing Character Universe Language Fun Process Party Fiction Creative Loneliness Lonely Finished Drawing Lists Occupation Guests Creative Process Solitary Writing Fiction Eavesdropping

Author:Hilma Wolitzer

“Fiction ought to announce the problems, dramatize the problems, display them. Yet offer no set answer. An answer would solve the mystery. Writing fiction, for me, is about putting on paper my obsessive interest in something mysterious. I may figure out the source of the mystery, the things that brought some action or image to my mind, but to make an equation of it would ruin the story.”

Writing Mind May Stories Problem Action Interest Answers Fiction Mystery Figures Source Ought Offers Paper Solve Mysterious Ruins Display Equations Obsessive Writing Fiction

Author:Antonya Nelson

“The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship”

Writing Art Fiction Ships Sail Sinking Writing Fiction Art Of Writing

Author:Kinky Friedman

“Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

Writing Effort Fiction Quality Killing Endless Capture Defeated Quality Of Life Writing Fiction Killing It

Author:Rose Wilder Lane

“I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen”

Ifs Thinking Writing Might Fiction Creativity Infinite Narrative Dependent Frozen Writing Fiction

Author:Laura Hillenbrand

“I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.”

People Thinking Want Writing Looks Real Enjoy Fiction Connections Paradox Being Real Writing Fiction

Author:Junot Diaz

“Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years I worried about money and no one asked me how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking me about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.”

Writing Years Firsts Made Said Lasts Fiction Changed Asking Decades Worried Expecting Writing Fiction

Author:Orhan Pamuk

“Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.”

Way Writing Firsts Different Sometimes Process Half Fiction Novel Occasions Nonfiction Dread Writing Fiction Writing Nonfiction

Author:Joan Didion

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.”

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

“Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.”

Writing Kind Mother Reading Fiction Subjects Mets Fellows Fascinating Japan Writing Fiction Geisha

Author:Arthur Golden

“The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes”

“When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world”

World Writing Fiction Tasks Complication Writing Fiction

Book:Conversations with Julian Barnes

Source: Conversations with Julian Barnes

“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.”

Writing Long Self Jobs Opportunity Difficult Fiction Doubt Ocean Lonely Plenty Crossings Writing Fiction Self-doubt Bathtubs Atlantic Ocean

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.”

World Writing Fiction Novel Sensations Secrecy Writing Fiction

Author:Umberto Eco

“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.”

Writing Humans Looks Lines Fiction Clear Respect Lifetime Thick Thread Persist Abiding Writing Fiction

Book:One Writer's Beginnings

Source: One Writer's Beginnings

“Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.”

Knows Writing Enough Facts Shows Fiction Novelists Get Away Ignored Grounded Good Sense Writing Fiction Impunity Nimble Whatever Works

Author:Tom Robbins

“Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.”

Writing Mean Inspiration Listening Leap Listen To Me Writing Fiction Inspiration To Write Inspiring Writing Willfulness

Author:Jhumpa Lahiri

“Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.”

Writing Long Values Fiction Limits Paper Increase Writing Fiction

Author:Buddy Ebsen

“About a year after (my stories began being published), magazine editor George Scithers, suggested to me that since I was so new at being published, I must be very close to what I had to learn to move from fooling around with writing to actually producing professional stories. There are a lot of aspiring writers out there who would like to know just that. Write that book.SFWW-I is that book. It's the book I was looking for when I first started writing fiction.”

Knows Writing Years Firsts Book Stories Moving Fiction Magazines Editors Writing Fiction Aspiring Writers Fooling Around Magazine Editors

Author:Barry B. Longyear

“Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.”

Writing Reading Fiction Practice Empathy Writing Fiction Reading Fiction

Author:Jennifer Haigh

“I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.”

Writing Littles Kids Fiction Teacher College Senior Little Kid Writing Fiction Humiliate

Author:Janet Fitch

“So much emotion goes into writing fiction.”

Writing Emotion Fiction Writing Fiction

Author:Stephen L. Carter

“I'm always in the kitchen, cooking and experimenting - I love it. And every now and then I think, 'I should write a cookbook' or, 'I should write for food magazines.' And then I get drawn back to writing fiction again.”

Thinking Should Writing Fiction Cooking Magazines Kitchen Now And Then Writing Fiction Cookbook

Author:Kiran Desai

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Writing Fiction Quotes