Writers On Writing Quotes - Page 2

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

Writing is a competition between the writer and the page. When the page wins, you fail as a writer.

I am sorry, I am not a writer. I simply put my thoughts on paper. Those helped by them call them a book and me a writer. Those who are not helped call it rubbish and me a fool. Both have reason.

It’s a great day to write a best-seller.

Every writer or wanna-be writer has ideas for books. The problem isn't finding an idea, it's choosing one

The greatest moments of creativity come in absolute solitude, when one’s mind is free from distraction and able to probe the depths of the impossible.

The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them.

Never chase people in your life. No one is worthier than you to be chased.

as a childthere was eitherbooksorpain.i chose books.-how i became a writer

Writing with a biro is the emotional equivalent of giving your loved one a plastic rose on Valentine’s Day.

The most we can hope for when we write anything is dazzling imperfection. The least we can hope for is accolades from one or two people who don't know us. Spending all afternoon on "the right word" is probably foolish (though I've done it many times), but then again, it may not be. There may be people out there who'll read that nearly-perfect sentence (or paragraph), with its "right word," and they'll nod and smile and say to themselves, "Hey, that's not too bad.

It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by design. The wise writer writes the best he can and leaves it to posterity to decide about greatness.

I love Edit. He gives me tons of second chances to make things just right between us.

Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.

Oh you cut your hair! What happened? Are you going through a breakup or something?""My favorite character died.

Words disappear in the air, but writing remains. If you want something to be remembered about you, write it down

Reading books makes us more attentive to our personage and the aesthetic world that we live in. Writers that we idolize use language, logic, and nuance to paint physical and emotional scenes with refined precision. A writer’s use of vivid language creates lingering aftereffects that work their wonder on the reader’s malleable mind. A stirred mind resurrects our semiconscious memories; it causes us to summon up enduring images of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Just as importantly, inspirational writing makes us recognize our own telling character traits and identify our formerly unexpressed thoughts and feelings.

Able writers let us into their minds and show us how they think and by that open our minds to ourselves

Young people ask why I became a writer, as if it were something I decided. I didn't decide; it grew on me like ivy.

Every book has its ancestors

Our personal story has many chapters that reconnoiter universal themes. We each struggle to understand ourselves and aspire to make ourselves known to the world. We struggle to win the love of other people. We seek to pick all the low hanging fruit that we come across in our journey through the corridor of time. We write our story in the Niagara of emotional experiences that flowing watercourse makes us human. We use a profusion of words, symbols, and the nuances pulled from a rich library of language to depict the cascade of our visions, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, dreams, and infelicitous thoughts. We use logical and dialectal thought processes when communing with our inner self. We use self-speak along with the esemplastic powers of poetic imagination, sprinkled with the fizz of creativity, to cohere disparate chapters of our life into a unified whole and relay the effervescence of our story to other people.

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day a novel should not be interrupted.

Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.

When I consider writing I sometimes wonder why doesn't everybody do it, other times I wonder why does anybody do it.

We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.

The world would have been a better place if some men had just shut their mouths.

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.

When life seems like an uphill task do not ever give up on yourself or on life! Travel to a new place, learn a new language, embrace a new culture, play a musical instrument, read a good book, watch the sunrise, experience the sunset, go for a swim in the river, hug a tree, sit near the lake, or climb a mountain! You will fall in love with life all over again!

It makes a great difference to the look of a novel whether its author believes that the world came late into being and continues to come by a creative act of God, or whether he believes that the world and ourselves are the product of a cosmic accident. It makes a great difference to his novel whether he believes that we are created in God's image, or whether he believes we create God in our own. It makes a great difference whether he believes that our wills are free, or bound like those of the other animals.

Whenever I encounter writer’s block, I stop writing … with my hands; and I then start writing with my legs.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.

What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true.

The writer doesn’t want to disclose or instruct or advocate, he wants to transmute and disturb. He cherishes the mystery, he cares for it like a fugitive in his cabin, his cave. He doesn’t want to talk it into giving itself up. He would never turn it in to the authorities, the mass mind. The writer is somewhat of a fugitive himself, actually. He wants to escape his time, the obligations of his time, and, by writing, transcendthem. The writer does not like to follow orders, not even the orders of his own organizing intellect.

Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.

You resting your head tenderly on my shoulders while we sit below the old Oak tree. And we smile at each other and gaze lovingly at the fascinating sunset over the hills. This moment makes me feel completely alive as if we have reached not just cloud nine or ten but also cloud infinity!

Put emotions to thoughts. Thoughts to words. Words to paragraphs. Paragraphs to pictures. Let your mind be known, heard and seen. Your thoughts are real as it could be.

A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

Sometimes the writing just comes and we're like, oh yeah. Gotta love when that happens.

I just slept for fifteen hours straight. Yes, writing a musical is THAT exhausting!

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ...this book...is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.

I think the reason why I don't read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand words and at the end, sum it up in one sentence; I am more for the one sentence. I am more for the essence. It's like how you need a truckload of roses to extract one drop of rose oil; I don't want to bother with the truckload of roses because I would rather walk away with the drop of rose oil. So in my mind, I have written two hundred books. Why? Because I have with me two hundred vials with one drop of essence in each!

If you are writing fiction, think like a god. Release all the power of your imagination; create worlds and destroy them at your will, create as many miracles as your story needs

Write on!

I reside in an abode where your thoughts imagine me... You reside in my heart where the auricles camouflage my longing...

Poets, with no sponsors, no agenda, are the truest form of freedom today, bleeding out every drop of themselves for the world to either hate or devour.

Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.

Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is a writer, some are written in the books and some are confined to hearts.

If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message.

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You’ll never wish you’d held back a little more.

A voice is a product of the writer’s own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers’ sangfroid. The tenor of the writer’s voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer’s pitch from other wordsmiths’ tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those inner parts of yourself, without damaging the psyche, that determines whether the beauty is experienced and expressed and shared with others or, in fact, becomes the death of the self and Soul and psyche. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.

Doing nothing can be as rewarding as doing something. And doing very little can be as productive, in a creative sense, as doing a lot.

Writing reflects life and life is a mystery. All any of us can do is press the fleet footed beauty of life close to our flesh and use whatever instruments are within our grasp to express the evanescent spark of mysticism that resides within us.

I am grateful to the Lord for blessing my path as a writer.

Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader...

Everyone writes with hand, but very few can write with heart