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Writing Quotes

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Writing Quotes

“I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter.”

World Needs Writing Reason Stories Dream Order Process Brain Subjects Chaos Anarchy Architect Writing Process Graphs

Author:Jonathan Nolan

“The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.”

Thinking Needs Writing Has Beens Done Whole Light Form Written Lays Rhetoric Swans Jasmine Surrealist Fauns

Book:the Revolt of the Masses

Source: the Revolt of the Masses

“Of course all children's literature is not fantastic, so all fantastic books need not be children's books. It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them.”

Needs Writing Kind Children Made Stills Book Stories Age Courses Literature Names Adults Fantastic Publish Fashionable Children's Books Children's Literature

Book:On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

Source: On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

“Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared.”

Needs Writing Kind Pain Joy Written

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“We need a daily paper edited and composed according to woman's own thoughts, and not as woman thinks a man wants her to think and write.”

Thinking Men Want Needs Writing Paper Newspapers Edited

Author:Susan B. Anthony

“Solitude and quiet are highly desirable, but the lack of them is no barrier to writing... The will to work builds all the seclusion that one needs.”

Needs Writing Solitude Quiet Barriers Desirable Seclusion

Book:Writing a Novel

Source: Writing a Novel

“When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.”

Needs Writing Grows Chance Tradition Protection Makers Merry Defiance Seeming Walt Butchers Bakers

Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays

Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays

“Writing a story requires you to understand how the world works, how characters think, how their emotions drive them to do surprising things, and so on. In other words, as a writer, you have to be more than a stylist. You need to learn to become a master of storytelling.”

Thinking World Needs Writing Character Stories Emotion Masters Storytelling Surprising Stylist Surprising Things

Author:David Farland

“We Americans write our own history. And the chapters of which we're proudest are the ones where we had the courage to change. Time and again, Americans have seen the need for change, and have taken the initiative to bring that change to life.”

Needs Writing Taken Initiative Chapters Need A Change Courage To Change

Author:Al Gore

“I have spent the last 30 years forming the religious right. I write a letter every week and send a newspaper every month to 200,000 pastors who are broadly called evangelicals, bringing them up to date on what is happening in Washington, in the state capitals, in the culture, and what we need to do about it. And of course I'm criticized for it, and of course I have calculated the positives and the negatives, but I have long been at peace with what I do.”

Needs Writing Years Long States Lasts Culture Courses Religious Week Months Happenings Letters Newspapers Pastor Up To Date

Author:Jerry Falwell

“If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.”

Ifs Men Needs Writing Trying Looks Dream Romance Strange Sitting Strange Things All Alone

Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne

“When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.”

Needs Writing Romance Certain Wish Felt Novel Fashion Materials Claims Assuming Entitled Latitude

Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne

“It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.”

“What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.”

Source: Conversations with Chinua Achebe