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Writing Life Quotes

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Writing Life Quotes

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

“I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.”

Thinking Writing Doe Attention Mistake Negative Reviews Territory Stakes Writing Life

Author:Darryl Pinckney

“There's been no nepotism in my acting artistic life, but I think it's been pretty clear in my writing life. I knew what a pantoum was at age 11 - I knew form - therefore I would win the poetry contest. But I also realized that I would never be a great writer.”

Thinking Writing Age Form Winning Acting Clear Artistic Contests Writing Life Great Writers Nepotism Artistic Life

Author:Aya Cash

“Harvard meant a lot in my writing life from the beginning, even though I didnt actually do much composition on the spot.”

Writing Spots Composition Writing Life Harvard

Author:Seamus Heaney

“The writing life doesn't move in a straight line. I've had successes and rejections all along the way, at every stage of my career, and I will continue to do so. Acceptances and rejections don't define me. They're both part of what it means to be a writer. My job is to simply keep doing the work.”

Writing Mean Moving Acceptance Rejection Writing Life

Author:Cheryl Strayed

“If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.”

Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft

“In the reading and writing life, delight, for me, is where the mystery lies. Easy enough to figure out how scenes of violence or tragedy or titillation or grossness or even sentimentality can move us, but how the written word elicits delight - what Nabokov calls that shiver in the spine - is much harder to calculate and define.”

Writing Enough Moving Lying Reading Easy Violence Mystery Scene Tragedy Writing Life Sentimentality Written Word Shiver Reading And Writing

Author:Alice McDermott

“My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can only write fiction effectively for about three or at the most four hours. No big mysteries, I just sit down and try to advance the cause a little bit every day.”

Writing Trying Hours Simple Morning Mystery Writing Life

Author:Jonathan Lethem

“You want to make a representative selection, but at the same time, you want to give a sense of the whole project. I have this big conflict in my writing life that I'm trying to work out all the time.”

Giving Writing Trying Conflict Work Out Writing Life

Author:Barbara Hamby

“The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.”

Writing May Helping Imagination Quiet Routine Companionship Writing Life Predictable Consoling Domestic Life

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.”

Ifs Writing Life Is Deals Solitary Writing Life Confinement Solitary Confinement

Author:Will Self

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

Writing Literature Scary Cells Vanity Breasts Modesty Modest Writing Life Outrageous Madmen Chained

Book:Afterthoughts

Source: Afterthoughts

“Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.”

Writing Trying Firsts Book Changed Bed Aspect Marketing Profit Driven Corporate Desks Writing Life 1960s Procrastinating Life Has Changed

Author:Paul Theroux

“In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.”

Ifs Thinking America Race Loud Writing Life Publicity Solemn Great Writers

Book:Conversations with Gore Vidal

Source: Conversations with Gore Vidal

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

Source: A Collection of Essays

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.”

Chaos Schedules Sections Writing Life Catching Whim Scaffolding

Author:Annie Dillard

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”

People Ifs Writing Trying Persons Hard Whole Writing Life Good Writing Great Writing Trying So Hard Chandeliers

Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

Source: The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

“Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.”

Ifs Trying Change Cheat Muse Writing Life Screenwriting Great Writing Landlord

Book:The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.”

Life Inspirational Courses Hours Our Lives Writing Life

Author:Annie Dillard

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.”

Hard Enough Spirit Reading Sweet Greed Senses Sensations Good Life Passages Writing Life Good Day Shortage

Author:Annie Dillard

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

Thinking Writing Travel Vacation Writing Life

Author:Eugene Ionesco

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.”

Knows Life Inspirational Giving Writing Book Play Seems Loses Writing Life

Book:The Abundance

Source: The Abundance

“It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.”

People Should Writing Believe Littles Hard Cases Written Writing Life

Book:On writing: a memoir of the craft

Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft

“Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.”

Writing Stills Care Dies Literature Scary I Care Writing Life

Author:Thomas McGuane

“Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.”

“You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”

Quality Fake Meals Writing Life Fake People Screenwriting Great Writing Good Meals

Book:The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.”

Writing Firsts Doe Asks Teach Alive Privilege Writing Life Fiction Writers

Book:Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

“Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.”

Writing Difficult Terrible Exercise Scary Supposed To Be Occupation Writing Life Agonizing

Book:The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Source: The Stories of Ray Bradbury

“What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.”

Want Giving Writing Hard Sacrifice Willing Hard Work Giving Up Prepared Scary Be Prepared Writing Life

Author:Sandra Brown

“I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Writing Trying Years Has Beens Given Lines Fiction Talent Paint I Realized Ashamed Forty Accused Writing Life God Given Talents

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.”

“Writing is the great invention of the world.”

World Writing Invention Writing Life Great Inventions

Book:Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. 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. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.”

Ifs Writing Quality Produce Quantity Doomed Writing Life Creative Writing

Author:Ray Bradbury

“Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.”

Writing Jobs Nice Taught Twenties Odd Ashamed Realising Introvert Writing Life Nineteen Outgoing Extroverts

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”

Writing Moments Hours Creation Paper Harder Track Scary Valuable Writing Life

Author:E. B. White

“Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.”

Ideas Earth Scary Hardest Writing Life Twilight Zone

Author:Rod Serling

“A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”

Writing Two Reading Understood Novelists Writing Life Reading And Writing Two Lives

Author:Jane Smiley

“To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.”

Writing Voice Forget Heard Design Gains Writing Life Great Writing Inspiration To Write

Author:Allen Ginsberg

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.”

“If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.”

Ifs Writing Productive Writing Life Family Life Good Writing Good Writers Writers And Writing Family Friends Writing By Writers Creativity And Writing Inspiration To Write

Author:David Brin

“For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.”

Writing Born Healing Realization Writing Life Comeback Right Words

Author:Catherine Drinker Bowen

“I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.”

Ifs Writing Long Book Stories Care Hate Reading Reader Don't Care I Don't Care Writing Life Book Reading Great Writers Great Writing Story Writing Writing Stories Writers Reading

Author:Roald Dahl

“Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.”

Writing Whole Found Process Paper Excuse Writing Life Writers And Writing Writing By Writers Great Writing

Author:John Steinbeck

“The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.”

Spirit Greed Sensations Writing Life

Author:Annie Dillard

“Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.”

Writing Seems Scary Finished Writing Life Letdowns

Book:The world according to Garp

Source: The world according to Garp

“History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had - it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.”

Writing Dies Dull Writing Life

Book:New Selected Poems

Source: New Selected Poems

“I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'”

Love Writing Heart Teach Hell Judgment Rely Rejection Bad Things Rejected Writing Life Rejecting

Author:Saul Bellow

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can't, you're dead.”

Ifs Writing Firsts Art Art Is Scary Rejection Writing Life

Author:Warren Adler