Writing Life Quotes - Page 12

There are authors who write to communicate, there are authors who write to impress themselves.

I can tell you that the writing of a book, no matter how deeply, profoundly personal-if it is literature, if you have attended to the formidable task of illumination the human heart in conflict with itself-will do the opposite of expose you. It will connect you. With others. With the world around you. With yourself.

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.

I travel to know the life of great souls in the pages of a book.

Everything from the humble woodlouse to specks of dust moving through a ray of sunlight. Each tells a story.

However, just like any line of work, writing is a negotiation, and creative control is as elusive as financial stability. I discovered that writing could be like cleaning carpets or working in a factory: just a meaningless production of words.

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.

Don’t ask for advice too much. Go with you, as gritty as that might be at times.

I am part of everyone I ever dated on OK Cupid.

Some artists benefit less from being interviewed than they do from being left alone.

Never underestimate the power of the written word, especially when you put them down in your own voice." -Cheryl L. Ilov, Forever Fit and Flexible: Feeling Fabulous at Fifty and Beyond.

I'd give you my heart, but you'd just give it back, so I'll give you my words instead.

I’m sorry if...I get too personal, if I make you uncomfortable, but writing is like one of the seven deadly sins, like Sharing on Mr. Rogers, and once you get the bug you’re trapped in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe forever.

Every book is worth reading. If it cannot make you wiser it will make you a critic

Writing is one means to investigate the mystique of life. Each fresh page is an unsullied canvas that an inquisitive writer employs to explore the poetic transience behind their existence.

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

Be brave to share your story! Each of our stories, have a golden treasure for a specific need.

Writers, by nature, are going to be slightly more delusional than others because we're dreamers, we imagine the unlikely, that's how we create... Rather than hoping my delusion becomes a reality, I'd prefer to keep on being deluded, to dream bigger and to imagine greater. My greater worry would be becoming less delusional .

For the writer, madness should seep slowly out of them from the world they endure each day.

Come now, I was not about to let that thing eat you.

Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers

As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again.

Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

Books aren't written, they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it...

Today almost everybody is a writer, the enormous publish button on blogs and websites begs you everywhere to click on it! And bam you are a writer. To hell with agents and publishing houses and rejection letters. Immortality for you is on the click of a mouth! We are advancing at the speed of light! You can become an author at 140 characters. To hell with long winding sentences and long hours of scratching the head, the immortals of today instantly get a "like" and they instantly enter the pantheon! They seat side by side Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, St Paul, Buddha, Martin Luther, Rousseau, Bangambiki…

When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, "You can do this. You've got what it takes." The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

Writing Tip:Don't let the "writing rules" bog you down when you're writing the first draft; they don't matter when you're writing the story, only when you're editing the story.

Forget how long the path to finishing your story. Address only what you have to write today.

I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?

Books are like rivers, meandering this way and that, but taking us on a steady, flowing course to somewhere different.

You’re a loner in body, mind, and soul. A writer who spends a day of solitude in the office is plagued by a mind that travels with the body. The work never stops.

You cannot write if you are not on fire

When a writer dies, he becomes his books.

I know, not everyone will like what I write, but writing is not about trying to please everybody.

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.

People speak even after their death. Only do speak those who have recorded their speech in writing before they die, the rest go silent forever

But if the Busyness = Status equation works, it’s strictly because a social game has emerged wherein relatively privileged, educated people with all kinds of Choice disguise their decisions to be busy as manifestations of the universe’s insatiable demand for their particular prowess. And the rest of us agree to be impressed. It’s a stupid game. We can stop any time.

If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer.

When I write, I write obsessively. I try to pace myself, but some fires are too hot to put out.

Write and keep writing, not because people will like it, but because someone may get a kick out of thrashing your book.

The only difference between writers and people who don't write is that writers aren't afraid to display their demons.

We travel with our thoughts to great lands.

Let your characters lead when you're dancing together.

I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.

The privilege is not writing a novel, it's to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

Imagination is a spark of a divine light.

Every book I've read appears in my writing.

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.

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

Books are like horcruxes--without all the evil--because a piece of the author goes into each one.

Have you noticed how prejudice still exists today. For instance, now they challenge famous people for their past achievements: People like Christopher Columbus and now even Vince lombardi. Nothing surprises me. I never grew-up with prejudices against anyone. I don't care what color you are or where you came from. This sort of stuff to me never made sense. You see I grew up in a "educated family." Education teaches you not to be so ignorant.

I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do.

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

Everything I write is sinful, full of lies, especially the big one, the one you go to hell for: pretending not to be a fool.

I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next. You could hire someone to write it for you if you can't write it yourself. That doesn't seem to matter. Just don't hire some sweaty hack who asks you questions for years and twists them into his own vision of what is right or wrong. Try to avoid doing that.

But perhaps people who liked to write aways made lists! Just for the fun of it.

Writing the story of their own life allows the author to parse their story into examinable segments while continuing to engage in the act of communion and creation.

Reading is sexy. Women who read are suspect. Women who write dangerous.