Writing Quotes - Page 110

Good becomes better by playing against better, but better doesn't become the best by playing against good.

And so I've written everything down, too afraid of my demons and what they may say, the doubt that eats at me from the inside. Too afraid that I'll forget and it'll all be a madwoman's dream.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

Putting a piece of you in your protagonist adds depth and merges the worlds of fiction and reality.

We have the power to move mountain, if we have faith that the mountain can be moved.

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

My favourite sound in the world —hearing your heart beatbeat for my heart.

When you are writing you're creating beauty for mind.

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.

The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that - not very appetizing - food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries.

He was angry with himself for having kissed her and enjoyed it, only to be disappointed by her in the end.He knew that love was never simple, but it was even less so for a vampire.He shook his head in disbelief as he walked away. He had really thought that she was the one for him and had genuinely believed that hewas going to spend the rest of his life with her, but now, he knew better.

We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.

First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.

Did I love her? No. I obsessed over her completely. And thank heavens I was obsessed. Obsession, infatuation, is something short-lived. A sweet fever dream that leaves you exhausted from the high. Love is perpetual. Love is an entire world compared to that other form of mania people mistake love for. If love is loving the reality of a person, obsession is idealising the fantasy of another. Did I love her? No. Never. But I was utterly obsessed.

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site.

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

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.

...the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?

Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it.

The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.

The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending.

If writing is your passion, write and don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise. You don’t need to quit your day job to do it. Create a realistic schedule and stick with it.

Cristofer did not write because he feared forgetting something. He never forgot anything, even when he reached old age. For Cristofer, the written word seemed to regulate the world. Stop its fluctuations. Prevent notions from eroding. This is why Cristofer's sphere of interest was so broad. According to the writer's thinking, that sphere should correspond to the world's breadth. Cristofer usually left his writings in the places where he had made them: on the bench, on the stove, on the woodpile. He did not pick them up when the fell to the floor: he vaguely anticipated their discovery, much later, in a cultural stratum. Cristofer understood that the written word would always remain that way. No matter what happened later, once it had been written, the word had already occurred.

Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.

Hear me, and I will instruct thee; hearken to the thing that I say, and I shall tell thee more.

Stop praying to God to change your marriage or your finances because you might end up seeing that you are the one that need the change not your marriage or finances.

Now, go, wirte it before them in a table and note it in a book, that it may be fore the time to come for ever and ever. Isiah 30:8

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Treat backstory like a pungent spice. I say this to encourage you to picture a jalapeno pepper that can set your mouth on fire, every time you even think about adding backstory into your book. What you need is subtlety.

A good approach is to allow one dream per novel. Then, in the final revision, go back and get rid of that, too.

LEARN FROM THE MASTERS: Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” This is an incredibly important lesson for writers to remember; never get such a giant head that you feel entitled to throw around obscure phrases like “Show, don’t tell.” Thanks for nothing, Mr. Cryptic.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness

I write to forget the days that broke me into a million nights.

My novels point out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

By their very nature, idiots do not have the intellectual capacity to identify genius. All that idiots are mentally equipped to recognize are other idiots.

It has often been saidthere’s so much to be read,you never can cramall those words in your head.So the writer who breedsmore words than he needsis making a chorefor the reader who reads.That's why my belief isthe briefer the brief is,the greater the sighof the reader's relief is.And that's why your bookshave such power and strength.You publish with shorth!(Shorth is better than length.)

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea.

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can’t polish what you haven’t written. Things that made for a normal life—like a daily routine that followed the sun—took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn’t a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep. He would often awake with a new idea—as if he’d merely been on a break and not unconscious—and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot’s seat in a ship that could go anywhere.

I swear that girl was born with a pen in her hand, the moon in her hair and stars in her soul.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

I did point out that I have no prophetic gifts. I write books because I tried to do something more useful and failed. Since I've been trained to write, I do that as a defense against total despair. And seeing people like you, who are actively engaged in trying to salvage pieces of our wrecked lives, gives me hope that after all we are not alone.

He’s an indulgent sort of man……With a quick lip and a fierce tongue, the sort of tongue that draws you in with charm and words of praise, awkward silences and desperate worships.

Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't.

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.

I write these words to touch you,My love, In places my hands can only dream of.

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there’s a difference, at one in the morning while you’re hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy.

Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition.

Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'.