Writing Quotes - Page 10

Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.

Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination There are simply many cases of it over the mainstream and that even reached the big screen.

English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that.

Thoughts are ideas scattered in your head. When written forms a sentence. When rhymed, it forms a phrase and singing it blooms a beautiful poem.

When I write I like to give equal justice to lyrics, too. I want the song to have meaning for me so I can make it have meaning for the audience.

Writing a book is easy, getting people to read it is the hard part.

Yes, writing comes easy for me and it's also a painful, arduous process. I love writing. I hate writing. I never want to write again, and I want to write all day, everyday.

Read obsessively. It will make you a better human and a better writer.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

I have hopein who I am becoming.I have belief in every scar and disgraceful wordI have ever spokenor been toldbecause it is still teaching meand I have hope in who I am becoming.They say it takes 756 days to run to someone you loveand they also say that the only romance worth fighting foris the one with yourselfand I know by nowthat they say a lot of things,people talking everywherewithout saying a word,but if it took me all those years to learn myselfor teach myselfhow to look into the mirrorwithout breaking itI know for a fact that it was a fight worth fighting.I stood up for my own head and so did my heartand we are coming to terms with ourselves.Shaking hands, saying ”let’s make this workfor we have places to goand people to seeand we will need each other”So I have hopein who I am becoming.It’s Julyand I have hope in who I am becoming.

Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul.

Begin to write, your heart flow with sacred words.

Will I ever see the mountains or am I doomed to roam the flatlands?

Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.

History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against this.

For when all else is done, on­ly words re­main. Words en­dure.

Still not sure about how easily he could be integrated into their posse, Trevor smiled in delighted relief at how tolerantly two of his close friends had received his new identity.

The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things.

Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived.

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

It is the storyteller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

I am going to build a fortress of books.Will you come inside and live with me?

They're a group called The Spirit-crushers and their leader is known as The Almighty Spirit-crusher.

Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

The great lie is like a sword that has been thrust into the heart of humankind.

First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

Biggest tragedy of life is when God ask us to glorify Him for our sakes but we choose to glorify self for satan's good.

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.

Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

Don't fuckin' sleep on yourself

Writing is not a hobby. It's the only way I get to shut up the demons in my head.

I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

A writer's mind is a place where demons kill angels in disguise.

I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.

Writing a novel is easy… writing checks is hard.

If a bloke gave you a hundred quid for a book you can bet your life it’s his way, but if all the poor and suffering people raise their hats to you for writing it - that’s different; it makes it worthwhile then.

As for style of writing if one has anything to say it drops from him simply and directly as a stone falls to the ground.

Commercial fiction writing – where my bread is buttered – is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other.

Life is a sea of vibrant color. Jump in.

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

A conscious act grew out of this by the time I began writing stories: getting my distance, a prerequisite of my understanding of human events, is the way I begin work. Just as, of course, it was an initial step when, in my first journalism job, I stumbled into making pictures with a camera. Frame, proportion, perspective, the values of light and shade; all are determined by the distance of the observing eye.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

Without living, how can you know? Without knowing, how can you speak?

A book lives a new life every time it is read.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant)

In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language.

Writing is about truth, whether it be fiction or a school essay. Don't give in and 'fake it till you make it.' Criticize what upsets you.

Wrote my way out of the hood...thought my way out of poverty! Don't tell me that knowledge isn't power. Education changes everything.

There is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

If you can master the opening, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

Making a product is just an activity, making a profit on a product is the achievement.

You want to get your book to press. You rush it through. Revision number twenty—done. Do you really need twenty more? Yes. A half-baked book is a half-birthed child. It aborts, is put on life support; reviewers line the hall to pull the plug.

Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.

...words can help us to see what is graceful or human where lovelines and humanity seem to fail...

I decided that a story was anything that I made up that kept the reader turning the pages or watching, and did not leave the reader or the viewer feeling cheated at the end.

There is nothing to me but you. I know it’s pathetic but, oh darling, it’s true.