Writing Quotes - Page 39

Many women arrange their lives around the people they love. Unfortunately, that arrangement takes up most of our days.

I had forgotten that, and so many things. How could I put everything down on paper? It seemed impossible. No matter what, the majority of life would be left out of this story, this sliver of a version of the life I'd known. But I tried anyway.

Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.

You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way.

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

A writing day is like any other day. Except I live in my pajamas, I forget to eat, and I suddenly look up, wondering when day turned into night.

Bottom line, when someone defensively says their way of writing is their style, then that usually means they're making an excuse for poor prose.

(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.

I don't get writers block. I get writer has too many ideas and doesn't know which one to start next, block.

Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make it.

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It’s the tender understanding that we’re living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there’s quite a bit of wonder in that.

There are very few innocent sentences in writing.

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.

They were completely alone on the long stretch of country road and there was no one else to share the moment with them.

The written word is what distinguishes us from all other animal life forms on this earth.

Words are one of the most powerful things given to human beings. In the hands of artists who can use them properly they are like weapons of mass construction.

You have a standing invitation to experience God's presence but you have to pay attention because attention creates access.

In love there is truth, and in truth there is peace.

Creative exhaustion is first cousin to writer’s block. First off, I try to accept that when it hits, I am not wasting time, but preparing myself to return to work. I blog more. I do something different, like answering this question. If I can’t force myself to finish a story, then perhaps it was not worth finishing. If I have to push rather than let it flow, it won’t be as good as if I take more time, mess around in the garden and try to shove the guilt deep into the compost pile. I am still a writer so long as I am thinking!

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.

Art is everywhere.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.

Sometimes when I am writing, I feel as though I were not reliving the events I describe here, but rather living them. That there is no distance at all, and that I do not know how my story will end. It is an extraordinary sensation, since, of course, I know only too well how it will all end.

The waste basket is a writer's best friend.

The Scribe"Under the wingsOf the feathered Goddess,And in the middleOf the three dancing women,The scribe comes aliveTo reveal mysteries hiddenThrough divine gifts givenThe scribe is drivenOn his sacred missionTo wake upAll the universe'sMen, women andHeavenly children.Under the seven rays of Aten,And from the age of just ten,The scribe comes aliveWith the fertile inkOf his luminous pen.Below the spectacle of the moon,And in the smile of the sun,The scribe is here to show usHow we are all one.

It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Step back and scrutinize your work, to delve deep into the meaning behind the words, it will get both easier in some ways and harder in others. Either way, you need to practice everyday. You will probably get faster with time, because you learn to do this instinctively, and the writing may flow better on some days more than others, but it doesn’t get easier. And if you aren’t writing everyday, you are doing yourself and your craft a disservice. Writing is a habit. Get into the habit.

Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.

Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well.

What you think and how you think, influences what you ink and how you ink.

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.

Writing a personal essay or memoir addresses how a person thinks and behaves in the context of society’s prevailing moral and ethical codes, informal rules, laws, and customs. A self-ethnographer emphasis what he or she considers important regarding how people perceive and categorize the world, their meaning for behavior, how they imagine and explain things, and ascertaining what has meaning for them. Expository writing, a discursive examination of a broad field of subjects, is one method of cohering the dimensions of a person’s emic and etic thoughts and a linked series of memorable events into a unified personal ideology how to live a purposeful life. In cultural anthropology, the emic approach focuses on what people of a local culture think and how they interpret events whereas the etic approach takes a more objective view of how an outsider evaluates the behavior and customs of a culture. Usage of both emic and etic analysis provides the richest description of a cultural or a society in which the personal essayist operates within.

... and I realise the only way to tell the others is through the way my voice can take these broken wordsand turn it into music. Turn it into poetry.And I sing to make myself come alive, but also for you,because I’d like this to mean something.To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day and so now I will tell.If not for you, then for my own heart, because it tells me to,and I'm learning to listen.

You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.

Despair is a night without lights. Dreams are the sunrise that leads you out of the darkness.

Weigh thou therefore their wickedness now in the balance, and theirs also that dwell the world; and so shall thy name no where be found anymore.

You can’t give what you don’t have. To write, you must read. To write well, read well.

Witnessing the panoply of beauty in all of nature takes us out of our shell of self-absorption and makes us realize that we are merely bit players in the game of life. Witnessing the majesty of beauty confirms that the real show lies outside us to observe and appreciate and not inside us to transfix us. True beauty charms us into seeing the grandeur of goodness that surrounds us and by doing so, the pristine splendor of nature releases us from wallowing in the poverty of our self-idealization. The bewitching spell cast by the exquisiteness of nature levitates our souls and transforms our psyche. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch what is beautiful, we cannot suppress the urge to replicate its baffling texture by singing, dancing, painting, or writing. Opening our eye to the loveliness of a single flower is how we stay in touch with the glorious pageantry of living.

I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life.

What do you want to write? What gets your goat? What irks you to no length? If you could change the world with words, what would they be?

My wishes before I die, to fulfill my mission on earth; The writing of my life stories to inspired present and future generations.

this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

Martial (the main character of LOCUS SOLUS) has a very interesting conception of literary beauty: the work must contain nothing real, no observations about the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary constructions. These are in themselves ideas from an extrahuman world.

Diet food is not a meal its a medicine.

The wrong man is not always wrong because of his wrong actions, often he is wrong because of no actions.

She doesn't quite chop his head off.She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.

Reading is a collaboration between the writer and reader. Both parties must keep that in mind when dealing with a work of fiction.”{Guy Gavriel Kay}

How do you end a story that’s not yours? Add another sentence where there is a pause? Infiltrate the story with a comma when really there should have been a period? Punctuate with an exclamation point where a period would have sufficed? What if you kill something breathing and breathe life into something the author wanted to eliminate? How do you get inside the mind of a person who isn’t there? Fill the shoes of someone who will never again fill his own?

Writers are sponges. They absorb life, then squeeze and ring it out onto a page. Sometimes, if they squeeze too hard, they dry up. Not hard enough and they remain saturated, heavy and unpredictable, as they carry around a volume of ideas too great for their capacity.

Stories serve multiple purposes. At a basic level they are great entertainment, which is essential for living a happy and healthy life, but on a deeper level stories help us explore issues that are otherwise difficult to address. On one hand a good book helps us escape our troubles, and on the other hand it can help us face up to those troubles by bringing real issues to the fore, often in a more manageable way, since the problems are experienced vicariously through the eyes of another.

If the boy who drawslets you look over his shoulder.If the poetsmilesand shows you her words.If the girl who sings for the shower only,hums a songin front of you.Know that you’re no longer a personbut the airand dustthat fills their lungs.When the world perishes,and all things cease to exist,you’ll remain inside an ink stain,a paint brush,a song.Poem N. 8

Stories do not change the world. I’ve learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way.... I mean it’s not the world I want to change.

You will have the grace of writing, when you boldly begin to write your first sentences.

I feel like part of getting better at writing is knowing where to find that inspiration. Right after something happens to me, the first thing I’ll do is go write when those feelings are really, really fresh.