Writing Quotes - Page 109

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Cry while writing it, and readers will cry while reading it.

CALVIN:Our hero regains consciousness at the feet of a sarcastic alien.

I simply vowed to the universe that I would write forever, regardless of the result. I promised that I would try to be brave about it, and grateful, and as uncomplaining as I could possibly be. I also promised that I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it - meaning that I would always support us both, by any means necessary. I did not ask for any external rewards for my devotion; I just wanted to spend the rest of my life as near to writing as possible - forever close to that source of all my curiosity and contentment.

When you're missing a peice of yourself, aching, gut wrenching emptiness begins to take over. Until you find the link that completes your very soul, the feeling will never go away. Most people find a way to fill this void, material possessions, a string of relationships, affairs, food...I bare my soul, with words, for all to see.

Never wait for your muse. Train him/her to show up to work when you do by pushing on. It's a dominant submission thing.

Stand up upon the right side, and I shall expound the similitude unto thee.

If one billion of you watch and do not intercede as one million of you assent to the one thousand who participate in the murder of a child, then one billion of you are a billion times guilty.

We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.

My writings are my letters to the universe, who loved me like a mother.

The world we write is but a dappled expression of the one in which we live.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses.

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

Listen.I will lose myselfif it means I can find you.

These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a knot of innumerable little threads. Innumerable threads were there; still, if I stopped to disentangle, I could collect a number. But whatever the reason may be, I find that scene making is my natural way of marking the past.

To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken.

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

Big thoughts roam in big places. If you want to expand your thinking, expand your geography.

Just get it down on paper and then we'll see what to do with it.

See the world anew and write down the bones of it.

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can’t get fresh fruit in the shops.

Write every day. Even if it's only a letter.

Creativity is nature. Nature is creativity.

I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up.And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring.

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

Someone said that once a family producers a writer, that's the end of the family.

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in other words, what it is that he has thought about it.

It is weird to me on how people will come to church frequently and have absolutely no desire or intention to change anything about their life based on what they experienced in the church.

Err on the side of awesome.

Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve.

A man who wants time to read and write lets the grass grow long.

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.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Sometimes one's imagination can be more beautiful than the most picturesque beach.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

Save your work, you may never know when the light will go off.

God takes two and make them one but satan takes one and make it two.

So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.

What has seven editions (the book had already gone into no less) got to do with the value of it? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself — a voice answering a voice.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

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

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

A tamed woman will never leave her mark in the world.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

To write a novel, you need an iron butt.

It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.

The only thing you should have to do is find work you love to do. And I can't imagine living without having loved a person. A man, in my case. It could be a woman, but whatever. I think, what I always tell kids when they get out of class and ask, 'What should I do now?' I always say, 'Keep a low overhead. You're not going to make a lot of money.' And the next thing I say: 'Don't live with a person who doesn't respect your work.' That's the most important thing—that's more important than the money thing. I think those two things are very valuable pieces of information.

We’re only instruments of love, flowing through heaps of pain hoping one day we’d hatch a passion of our own.

Rejection sucks. It sucks every time, whether it's a big suck or a little suck. But it's part of the process. It's part of being a writer. It's a badge that says 'I'm serious about this, and I'm sending out my work.

the romance of solitude and small places, the blurring of identity.

Not everyone loves to read, but everyone loves stories. Some stories are told with words, some with paint, and some with music. Some are filmed, others are set on a stage. Some are sculpted from clay or woven in thread, and some are even explored in video games. The best ones are from other people, because they are raw and unique. But however they come, stories are powerful because they create something out of nothing: courage out of fear, knowledge out of ignorance, and hope out of despair.

The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?

Identifying Your DreamSome people can easily identify one primary dream. For others, a dream is more elusive. These people often have many dreams at once, or a general idea of a dream that never takes a specific shape.

Whenever someone is a threat to the enemy there will be an attack dispatched against that person to try to minimise their effectiveness.

When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.