Best Writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 8

“When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.”

“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.”

“Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.”

Way Writing Firsts Looks Stories Happens Fiction Strange Materials Beast Observers Fiction Writers

Book:Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

Source: Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

“So-called "inspiration" is no more than an extreme example of a process which constantly goes on in the minds of all of us.”

Writing Mind Inspiration Process Example Goes On Extremes

Book:Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind

Source: Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind

“It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation.”

“When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey". Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.”

Writing Ideas Hard Dream Remember Waiting Advice Negative Silent Data Capability Gathering Kipling

Author:Rose Tremain

“Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.”

Thinking Writing Kind Littles I Can Ideas Happens Able Boys Novel Path Cutting Willing Holes Leap Get Back Broads Sections Blackness Right Path

Author:Chang-Rae Lee

“My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.”

People Writing Wells Enough Facts Faces Difficult Talking Ambition Block Mysterious Prescriptions Hysteria Writer's Block Writing Well

Author:Thomas Mallon

“Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.”

Way Writing Art Style

Author:David Hare

“Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.”

Writing Made Character Born Exercise Flesh Free Will Volition Fictional Character

Author:John Banville

“But once an original book has been written - and no more than one or two appear in a century - men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.”

Men Should Writing Has Beens Two Book Different Use Able Courses Language Written Century Letters Originals Titles Theme Copies Apes Imitator Use Of Language

Book:Planet of the Apes

Source: Planet of the Apes

“I just write whenever I can.”

Writing I Can

Author:Elmer Kelton

“Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he's either naive or insane.”

Writing Lines Insane Naive

Book:Mitla Pass

Source: Mitla Pass

“We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they can also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.”

Thinking Knows Writing Mean Art Reality Loses Space Rooms Know How Filled Intention Smell Stuck Rough Abandoned Volume Caves Arrows Tunnels Mean Words

Author:Susan Sontag

“It takes an awful lot of time to not write a book.”

Writing Book Awful

Author:Douglas Adams

“That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.”

Writing Doe Stuff Work Out

Author:John Green

“Witty and mean is easy - but fond and funny is hard.”

Writing Mean Hard Easy Witty

Author:Steven Moffat

“Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.”

Writing Wells Enough Seems Literature Realizing Failing One Thing Depends

Book:Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

“And I do think that great fiction, even when it's comedic, has an urgency or an inevitability to it, a sense that the writer absolutely had to write this particular story in this way.”

Thinking Way Writing Stories Fiction Particular Urgency Inevitability Comedic

Author:Karen Russell

“There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.”

Ifs Knows Writing Mean Done Used Tomorrow Late Sitting Ass Painter Phrases Muse Uncles Grind Showing Up Raphael

Author:Peter S. Beagle

“Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem.”

Giving Writing Mean Character Problem Definitions

Author:Maureen Johnson

“Write the best book you possibly can, then dedicate yourself to getting people to read it.”

People Writing Book

Author:J.A. Konrath

“Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.”

Writing Lost Novel Childhood Illusion Expectations Titles Maturity Passages Thrill Clash Great Writers Motifs

Author:Andre Maurois

“Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.”

Writing Speak

Author:Roland Barthes

“Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.”

Writing Done Existence Novel Written Ass Chairs

Book:Is Life Like This?: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months

Source: Is Life Like This?: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months

“The core of character lies in each individual story person's ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly that something is important.”

Feels Writing Persons Important Character Stories Care Lying Individual Ability Core

Book:Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

Source: Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

“It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.”

Writing Mind Has Beens Happens Form Study Finished Could Have Been

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.”

Writing Kids Speak Adults Upset Bores

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away.”

Ifs Writing Book Character Moving Purpose Behinds Reader Comfortable Pages Ultimate Smell Block Novelists Plot Outlines Phony Plausible Synopsis

Author:Clive Cussler

“I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping.”

Writing Book Left

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“Writing is like sex. You have to save your love for the love object. If you go around spouting about your idea, there'll be no "charge" left. You can't father children that way.”

Ifs Way Writing Children Ideas Father Left Sex Objects Father Child

Author:Ray Bradbury

“Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.”

Knows Giving Writing Has Beens Pain Heaven Hours Chance Journey Reader Bitter Heartache Relaxation Tedium Bitter Experience

Book:The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence

“By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.”

Writing Style

Book:Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

“You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.”

Knows Writing Book Ends Reading Reading Or Writing

Author:Lynda Barry

“Writing [is] a form of prayer.”

Writing Form Prayer

Author:Franz Kafka

“Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.”

Thinking Writing Trying Cures Curse

Author:Julianna Baggott

“Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessarily flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress.”

Writing Secret Cutting Progress Rocks Mountain Picks Flow Highways Chipping Away Slow Progress

Author:Piers Anthony

“Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.”

World Giving Writing Heart Littles Light Black Figures Blow Shocking Prettiest Shocking Things

Book:Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells

Source: Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells

“I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do.”

Thinking Needs Writing Imagination Western Notion Block Naps Time Off Inactivity

Author:Elliott Smith

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”

Writing Years Hours Imagination Novel Streets Land Borders Shopping Factories Workplace Unreal Cathedrals Expeditions

Book:An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography

Source: An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography

“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.”

Life Writing Happiness Joy Lovers True Love Happy

Book:The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Source: The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

“Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me ... Overall, we feel extraordinarily lucky to have been dealt a hand in life that enables us to write large checks to the government rather than one requiring the government to regularly write checks to us-say, because we are disabled or unemployed.”

Feels Writing Doe Has Beens Hands Government Business Lucky Taxes Checks Finance Bother Strings Disabled Unemployed Irs

Author:Warren Buffett

“The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.”

Writing Book Funny Reading Admire

Author:Anatole France

“We are writers. We danced with words, as children, in what became familiar patterns. The words became our friends and our companions, and without even saying it aloud, a thought danced with them: I can do this. This is who I am.”

Writing Children I Can Can Do Patterns Who I Am Familiar Companion I Can Do This

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I wanted to write a novel. At 12 I knew, I am a writer. I said it to nobody.”

Writing Said Wanted Novel

Author:Peter Bichsel

“I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.”

People Ifs Want Feels Writing Humans Persons Problem Audience Fairs Luck Bounds Superiors Dumb Heavenly Inferiors Intervention Comical Paraphrase Human Problems Dumb Luck

Author:Kurt Vonnegut

“In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.”

Writing Real Energy Lost Waste

Author:Larry Brooks

“Dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny.”

Ifs Feels Writing Wells Stories Use Can Do Novel Written Fine Dialogue Necks Short Story You Can Do It Tire Being Positive Dialect Rave

Author:Anne Lamott

“Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.”

Knows Men Want Writing Wells Energy Hell Sticks Addict

Book:The Portable Jack Kerouac

Source: The Portable Jack Kerouac

“I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.”

Ifs Writing Heart Littles Real Hurt Dark Loss Rooms Son Broken My Heart Happenings Died My Son I Was Hurt

Author:Neil Gaiman

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Writing Quotes