Writing Quotes - Page 20

Even though I'm an ordinary writer, I too, have trouble when it come to writing along the way. But at least I manage to self-publish my book with no errors (hopefully). Just check out Agatha Christie, an author who also has a learning disability. She managed to be succesful. And I hope that I would be successful as her and Abishek Bachan.

The Fiction defense. Sometimes I just need to use it.

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

If the most High grant thee to live, thou shall see after the third trumpet that the sun shall suddenly shine again in the night, and the moon thrice in the day:

By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power.

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

Is not our purest form of writing that done without the taint of money?

People ask me how to start writing. I tell them that 'Creating Creates Creativity'. Put your notes and outline aside. Start with one anecdote or conversation, and that will lead to another and another. It's the steps, the path, not the final destination that drives the process or writing.

The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.

I didn't come from a success lineage but I am so glad that my earthly lineage is not my final story because when I gave my life to Jesus twelve years back, God interrupted my story.

The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story

While victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality.

I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

No price is too high to pay, to be the author of your fate.

...each part of a story, each word if possible, was to work frontally as well as laterally... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")

You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can't ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it's important, that it's not typing; it's writing.

There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing.

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

Have you ever been writing something when you just forgot where you were, and what time it was, and you kept diving down deeper into your

No tears and the writer no tears and the reader.

If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing then you are a writer”"Se alla mattina quando ti alzi non pensi altro che allo scrivere allora sei uno scrittore

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago

I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.

Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.

The thing she realised in that moment, that fraction of waiting, was lost. Nothing could bring the thing back, no words could make the thing solid and visible and therefore to be coped with. Solid and visible form was what she had been seeking. I will put this into visible language.

When I write, my soul sings.

Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners.

The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That's what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and know that they aren't alone in the universe. I want my words to act as connective tissue.

Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.

You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre.

I'm the first to admit that I don't write right. Now, relax and enjoy the show! The sideshow, that is.

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.

Writing is like exercise. You have to work at it to see results.

When I’m passionate about something I strive for excellence, judging whether or not I achieved it is up to the audience.

The highest kind of writing—which must not be confused withthe most ambitious kind…belongs to the realm of grace. Talent ispart of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws,absolutely. But finding the subject and theme which is in perfectharmony with your deepest nature, your forgotten selves, your hiddendreams, and the full unresonated essence of your life—now thatcannot be reached through searching, nor can it be stumbled uponthrough ambition. That sort of serendipity comes upon you on alucky day. It may emerge even out of misfortune or defeat. You mayhappen upon it without realising that this is the work throughwhich your whole life will sing. We should always be ready. Weshould always be humble. Creativity should always be a form ofprayer.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers.

She said that in writing anything, you must be perfectly honest.

Bon Jovi is most definitely the key to how I am able to write so much in a day

Throughout the ages, the wisdom has been taught. Now the language has changed, and truth is given in the language of science.

Arrogance kills creativity.

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don't want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who's the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they've taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can't understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don't have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

I'm a drinker with writing problems.

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

It's okay to write a cliché in a first draft; it sets a marker that you can get far, far away from in the rewrites.

Crying will achieve nothing. Only action will.

Have you ever asked yourself this question "what can God do through me?" The preacher has no platform if the people has no sense of mission.

My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.