Writing Quotes - Page 54

Embrace what works and discard what doesn't.

I've always said "Writer's Block" is a myth. There is no such thing as writer's block, only writers trying to force something that isn't ready yet. Sometimes I don't write for weeks. And then all of the sudden I'll get a rush of inspiration and you can't drag me away from my notebook. But I don't stress out if I don't hit some arbitrary word count each day or if I go a few days without writing something.

Paradox is beloved of novelists. The despised savior, the humane whore, the selfish man suddenly munificent, the wise fool, and the cowardly hero. Most writers spend their lives writing about unexpected malice in the supposedly virtuous, and unexpected virtue in the supposedly sinful.

not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.

Without written goals, we fail to plan and to run with single-minded purpose.

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?

My faith gives me the ability to say, whatever is next, I'm ready. If it is Hillary or Trump I am ready because they might sit on the desk but they do not sit on the throne.

...if you always move in certainty, your writing will be flat - creativity is a rugged terrain...

Life is a cracked surface at best. Fiction is a nice edifice. / every word/sentence/paragraph gives a writer an opportunity to reinforce or deliberately crack the edifice by screwing with meaning, structure, grammar, the fourth wall, etc. / different types and degrees of cracking produce different arrangements of order and chaos.

I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line.

As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day.

It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn’t be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more confused it seems even to me, like hazy prospects seen from too far away, since everything passes, even the memory of our most scalding tears and our heartiest laughter; our eyes soon dry, our mouths resume their habitual shape; the only memory that remains to me is that of a long tedious time that lasted for several winters, spent in yawning and wishing I were dead

These poems are cupsthat I pour my love into.Here, Drink!

Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revi

What are you going to do? "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink.

In Ireland a writer is looked upon as a failed conversationalist.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.

The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.

I'd been writing for as long as I could remember, but once I read Otherworld, I'd stopped writing original stories to focus on fan fiction. It was such a rich, exciting world that I couldn't think of writing anything else.

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

If we were to understand how important it is to say something and say it well, maybe we wouldn’t write a single word, but that would be tragic.

Use all the ugliness you’re feeling to make something beautiful

My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

You can make anything by writing

When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.

Too many words for one book--truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.

I was lost in a magical mystic world as I step into the old university library. This place I would say is the birth place of the ‘writer’ in me and still one of my most loved places in the world. It was always peaceful there. Each and every moment I spent their searching for books or walking on unknown paths with the un-quenching thirst for knowledge, is cherished in my mind forever. The dark dusty corners all brown and the smell of old books untouched by readers for years, the quiet long walking passages between overloaded bookshelves were places where my magical world existed.

But it was Aldo’s pen that became his most forceful tool. He started a newsletter for rangers called the Carson Pine Cone. Aldo used it to “scatter seeds of knowledge, encouragement, and enthusiasm.” Most of the Pine Cone’s articles, poems, jokes, editorials, and drawings were Aldo’s own. His readers soon realized that the forest animals were as important to him as the trees. His goal was to bring back the “flavor of the wilds.

Procrastination is opportunity's natural assassin.

Every good story needs a good, bad and lost soul. A people to fight for, an item to turn the tide of battle, an enigmatic character, a motivator/mentor, and an unlikely reluctant hero.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff.The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just stories about a guy drinking tea and staring out the window at the rain while he thinks about his mother. And the truth is a lot of literary fiction is just that. Like, kind of pointless, angsty, emo, masturbatory bullshit.However, we should not be judged by our lowest common denominators. And also you should not fall prey to the fallacious thinking that literary fiction is literary and all other genres are genre. Literary fiction is a genre, and I will fight to the death anyone who denies this very self-evident truth.So, is there a lot of fantasy that is raw shit out there? Absolutely, absolutely, it’s popcorn reading at best. But you can’t deny that a lot of lit fic is also shit. 85% of everything in the world is shit. We judge by the best. And there is some truly excellent fantasy out there. For example, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet with the ghost; Macbeth, ghosts and witches; I’m also fond of the Odyessey; Most of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, Gargantua and Pantagruel.Honestly, fantasy existed before lit fic, and if you deny those roots you’re pruning yourself so closely that you can’t help but wither and die.

What's so great about writing?" "You can make anything true

I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed out my words. I want to get all fucked up and write raw and ugly about all these things I see and am and could be.

Now hear of the new judgement. You are judged many times more by what you do in groups than for what you do as individuals.

We only pay for what we admire, want and recognize as necessary, even when a cup of coffee is priced at the same value of a book that can change our entire future.

Be what the world needs.

Beauty surrounds us, but oftentimes it takes a person with a poetic perception, an artist’s way of looking at the world, to first notice the sublime, and then stagecraft the splendor of nature so that other people can perceive their synoptic vision. The spirit and aesthetic intention behind the work is what assigns the work its artistic quality. Great works of poetry and writing, for instance, express not simply a criticism of life, but also encompass a philosophy for living.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

What immense satisfaction it must be to fashion a story like [Maupassant's]! One must say 'fashion' because it is not merely writing, but massing and cutting away like a sculptor, chiseling lean and clear. And to put one's work confidently in the crucible of Time; to know that in six perfect pages is the finest form of one's idea: This satisfaction is the only true reward of the artist, and this his highest possible joy on Earth.

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.

Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy’s death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. “This is my history,” he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: “Boy, was I loved.

I think that a writer should observe the real world before imagining a non-existent one.

It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open.

Maybe I hope too much. Maybe I dream too much or maybe I love too much to just give up on you.

My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.

When you write something down, it stays forever.It's like a little part of you that you're giving to the universe

The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.

I know that life is busy and hard and that there's crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don't. Please don't. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making your art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable.

Lyrics paved my teenage route to loving words. I take those passionate mini-stories with me everywhere.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

Remember: Writing is drawing.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.", November 1913)

Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn’t given the chance to live because I don’t have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to speak it to. Especially if it’s a particularly good sentence, a sentence with truth or beauty or humor or sadness to it. The best ones always take you by surprise. They sneak into your head while you’re walking down the aisles at a supermarket, or flat-out assault you when you’re at your grandmother’s funeral, and you have to scramble to give the thought life before it’s gone forever. Cocktail napkins, palms, text messages sent to yourself.

Wait," Charlotte said. "I'd like to say something, if I may, Papa." He nodded, and Charlotte stood. Her siblings were still looking very grave. She hoped they were in the proper frame of mind to hear what she had to say, especially Branwell. "I have been thinking a great deal about ... My stories." She nodded significantly to them, willing them to understand that she was not talking about writing so much as about crossing over. "Papa was very wise when he called my writing a childish habit, and I think he understands that, for me, its a dangerous one as well." The small square of paper that had caused such consternation lay in front of her on the table. Now she took it up and held it out, looking at each if her siblings in turn. "Emily. Anne. Branwell." She ripped the paper in half. Emily gasped. " I am renouncing my invented worlds and all who live there. If any of you are in the grip if a similar childish habit"- she raised an eyebrow at her brother - "I challenge you to do the same.