Best Writing Life Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 10

“If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.”

Ifs Writing Long Stills Feelings Hours Rooms Company Alive Tough Scary Cells Buried Locked Vague Writing Life Long Hours

Book:Making an Elephant: Writing from Within

Source: Making an Elephant: Writing from Within

“For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.”

“Lehman uses many conveyances—including the prose poem, the sestina, and curt rhymes—to travel across the writing life of a poet whose instinctive romanticism is always bracing and tough-minded, brimming with a rare generosity.”

Writing Use Poet Tough Including Generosity Prose Rhyme Writing Life Romanticism

Author:Ken Tucker

“But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.”

Writing Sometimes Difficult Like You Down And Writing Life Flip Crank Ventilation

Book:Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm

Source: Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm

“A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.”

Way Writing Long Life Is Support Keys Findings Productive Writing Life

Book:A Writer's San Francisco: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul

Source: A Writer's San Francisco: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul

“Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.”

Life Writing Life Is Process Degrees Letters Impression Remove Uncertain Writing Life Weaving Misrepresentation Letter Writing

Author:George Eliot

“The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.”

Life Writing Seems Next Writing Life Recollection

Book:The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself

Source: The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.”

Hands Time Labor Chaos Workers Organized Schedules Sections Writing Life Catching Whim Scaffolding

Author:Annie Dillard

“Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.”

Turns Belief Engines Desks Writing Life Belts Gears

Book:The Writing Life

Source: The Writing Life

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”

Inspirational Hard Good Life Writing Life Good Day Shortage

Author:Annie Dillard

“Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.”

Whole Writing Life Writers And Writing Writing By Writers Great Writing

Author:John Steinbeck

“Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.”

Ifs Way Needs Writing Real Use Life Is Rich Originals Details Writing Life

Book:Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.”

Writing Whole Paper Writing Life Writers And Writing Writing By Writers Great Writing

Book:Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

Source: Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

“The report of my illness grew out of his (James Clemens) illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Grew Illness Reports Writing Life Exaggeration

Author:Mark Twain

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.”

“For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.”

Writing Believe Different Facts Action Form Felt Situation Issues South Significant Desperate South Africa Writing Life Apartheid Uneasy

Author:Athol Fugard

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.”

Source: A Collection of Essays

“The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.”

Source: Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

“Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.”

Feels Writing Years Facts Home Lasts Success Levels Air Couple Latter Writing Life Success And Failure

Book:No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider

Source: No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider

“But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.”

Ifs Writing Stills Hard Stories Would Be Fun Cutting Teaching Accustomed Writing Life Salary Love Teaching

Author:Orson Scott Card

“The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not.”

Writing Life Is Secret Writing Life Secret Life

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips

“I'm amazed at how much my writing is improved when I step away from the computer, even in small amounts. If I'm stuck, I vacuum the living room or walk the dog. I'm amazed at what comes out of that... We have to realize that part of the writing life where we're sitting down at the computer is harvesting the crops, but you have to have planted them and watered them and created fertile soil - and that's a life.”

Ifs Writing Realizing Walks Rooms Steps Dog Amount Computer Sitting Stuck Soil Amazed Writing Life Crops Vacuums Living Room Fertile Sitting Down Small Amounts Fertile Soil

Author:Donald Miller

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Writing Life Quotes