Writing Quotes - Page 41

I don't think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...

Writing is a defence against boredom, but it's also a cure for melancholy.

If you are alone, tell some stories to yourself. This is a different kind of pleasure and it has, indeed, its reward. I have tasted a little of everything, and I have truly never enjoyed anything more.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

I arrived, I saw humans and I saw through their faces. Nothing ever changes but the light in their eyes. For I too have buried my demons today, without knowing what might remain beneath the face of tomorrow.

As an author, I want to write what I’m inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into what I’m writing.

Don’t you ever get scared?” I ask.“Of what?” She says.“Of not being good enough.”“You mean at writing?” L’il asks.I nod. “What if I’m the only one who thinks I can do it and no one else does? What if I’m fooling myself-““Oh, Carrie.” She smiles. “Don’t you know that every writer feels that way? Fear is part of the job.

The other day, when I was deciding where to place a mountain range, how to make a river's flow detour around underground stalactite caves, and what precise color to give the sky at sunset, I realized I was God... or an artist and a writer.

You connect yourself to the viewer by by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you.

All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

There is something so innocent about blank pagesThat I can't lie to them about my existence

he best thing to do is to loosen my grip on my pen and let it go wandering about until it finds an entrance. There must be one – everything depends on the circumstances, a rule applicable as much to literary style as to life. Each word tugs another one along, one idea another, and that is how books, governments and revolutions are made – some even say that is how Nature created her species.

A writer creates from his mind; his creations emanate from the feelings enmeshed deep within his heart. From the fire burning within his soul, he gives shape to his thoughts. His thoughts start to breathe. Every sentence breathes with a purpose.

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of human

No. Not really red,but the color of a rose when it bleeds.

There’s a much different message received, when the signs written in the flesh were not in your hand writing.

I am not a supporter of burning books; but like poison, some books should be kept away from simple minds who can't take in the strong content they provide

And so I just kept writing to myself.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.

One should use common words to say uncommon things

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

One journalist complemented another that his article on a dispute, "had made both sides see themselves as they are.

Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Church and State, we control the education of the Empire, we lend to the Press such distinction as it consents to receive, and we are a welcome asset at dinner-parties.Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning. It also has an economic side, on which we need not be hard. Most of us must get a job before thirty, or sponge on our relatives, and many jobs can only be got by passing an exam. The pseudo-scholar often does well in examination (real scholars are not much good), and even when he fails he appreciates their inner majesty. They are gateways to employment, they have power to ban and bless. A paper on King Lear may lead somewhere, unlike the rather far-fetched play of the same name. It may be a stepping-stone to the Local Government Board. He does not often put it to himself openly and say, "That's the use of knowing things, they help you to get on." The economic pressure he feels is more often subconscious, and he goes to his exam, merely feeling that a paper on King Lear is a very tempestuous and terrible experience but an intensely real one. ...As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment were contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.

All Authors come from the unified countrynent known as Australia. Authors live in the future where love is external.

The size of your audience is more important than the size of your book

Revenge is a dish best served published!

Writing a book is like raising a child, the only difference is you don’t have the fucking part in writing a book.

I couldn't even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn't let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn't stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.

Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.

Nonetheless, writing regularly, inspiration or no, is not a bad way to eventually get into an inspired mood; the plane has to bump along the runway for a while before it finally takes off.

Failing to writer everyday doesn't mean that you've given up, though a chapter a day - keeps writers block away!

I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, And the reason of things, And to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness: And I find more bitter than death, the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands-

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma...

There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...

Autobiographical writing stands as lasting memorial for enduring the travails of an earthly life. Writing is an apt technique to score our storyline into the annuals of time. To endure a mortal life is merely a transitory experience whereas writing about how one lived is an internalized exposition of what it means to be human. Writing is an external exhibition injecting the author into the world’s consciousness.

In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entertainments of many kinds would stop over in those days for a single performance in Jackson's Century Theatre. Then, as now, my imagination was magnetized toward transient artists - toward the transience as much as the artists. I must have seen "Acrobats in a Park" at the time I wrote the story as exotic, free of any experience as I knew it. At the center of the little story is the Zorro's act: the feat of erecting a structure of their bodies that holds together, interlocked, and stands like a wall. Writing about the family act, I was writing about the family itself, its strength as a unit, testing its frailty under stress. I treated it in an artificial and oddly formal way; the stronghold of the family is put on view as a structure built each night; on the night before the story opens, the Wall has come down when the most vulnerable member slips, and the act is done for. But from various points within it and from outside it, I've been writing about the structure of the family in stories and novels ever since. In spite of my uncompromising approach to it, my fundamental story form might have been trying to announce itself to me.

There is no greater hiding place for a secret than within the mind of a madman.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

If your imaginary friends are at all like mine, they’re better off dead.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.

A blind lover, don't knowwhat I love till I write it out

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words...

It's in my blood, as magic is in yours." His mouth is still smiling, but his tone is somber. "I couldn't stop writing even if I wanted to.

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they’re grounded in solid human emotion and experience.

Don't keep your Muse locked up in the closet. Set them free to dance across the page and what they create will be a masterpiece.

When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people.

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

Art is life.

There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

I am Frustration. I am Memory-Lost. Sometimes I read a line a dozen times before it sticks. My creative force has slipped. I type slower, speak slower, think at a snail’s pace. I’m Life shapeshifted by Post Traumatic Stress, bastardized by Fate.

There are a thousand things to hear about, informationally, daily, but the thing that doesn't go away is the one to pay attention to.

What is the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich, exactly?” Tess asked, pursing her lips. Erin knew it was her attempt at making light of a heavy situation.“You know, just the right amount of jelly where it doesn’t squish out when you bite into it. Not so much peanut butter that you get all goopy-mouthed. Making the perfect PBJ is an art form. And it has to be fresh white bread, and the best grape jelly and creamy peanut butter on the market. No exceptions.”Tess bobbed her head. “Ah, yes. The dreaded goopy mouth.