Writing Quotes - Page 67

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

Breaking through writer's block is like thinking out of the box: Both require an ability to imagine a world outside your four walls or rearranging them to get a better view.

I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career.

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.

I think of myself first as a singer, meaning an interpreter. Then I think of myself as a writer. It is an outlet I have to have. I get very hard to live with without something happening to write about.

Typically, we start out with enthusiasm and then grow unsure--sometimes about everything.

...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.

Everything in life is a metaphor for everything in life." Bonnie Marlewski-Probert

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they’re creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can’t make it better.

Subtlety is the mark of confidence and is thus by far the hardest thing for a writer to achieve.

Her intention was to make the crowd aware, if they weren't already, that John was the giant whose shoulders Emily stood on.

You are your greatest product and behind every book lies an author who wrote it.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

What’s a TH?”“A Traffic Hazard,” Heeb clarified.“Oh you mean because the woman is so hot she’ll take your eyes off the road?” Narc confirmed.“Exactly.

Warrior of the night must be awake to write the sacred words.

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

I’m engaged in the dance of the ages and the search for a song to go with it. Though Templeton’s A Veritable Smorgasbord is a well-deserving classic, it’s a stanza too short for my morphing existence. So I write my own.

...hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

Pencil. Paper. Forget the world.

A writer’s tools are desperation, humiliation, loneliness, love, affection, heartache, happiness, glee, defeat, victory, setbacks, and a desire for personal redemption. People with the experience to know of such things relate that in order to write one must suffer an alleyway of anguish, and experience an array of physical and emotional pain. More than anything else, emotional growth, and writing are each reflective of the immeasurable gain accomplished through studious reflection.

Writing is something I do everyday. If I waited for inspiration, I’d never get anything done.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography,but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my arguments by writing well.

(I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. ("The Adoration of The Magi")

Writing is not just a process of creation. It is also a process of self-discovery

As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches .

Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job!

I decided that if I was never going to sell anything as long as I lived, I might as well do what I want to do 'cause then at least I would've done what I wanted to do in life. What's that worth?

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

Poetry is jealous of you tonight, for as soon as I come to pen a few words, your perfume attacks me in the most civilised manner and I forget myself. I forget the poem. I forget the ...

I writeNotFor the sake of gloryNot For the sake of fameNotFor the sake of successBut for the sake of my soul

I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

I speak, I speak, and truth at that. Writers are a curious breed: brooding, fickle, alternately loving and hating their work—and each other. You’re my friend? Don’t pick up that pen!

Some people want to kill goliath but they do not want to attend to sheep. How can God use you to kill giants if you cannot follow simple instructions?

I live precariously through my characters - so I want them to be loved passionately, live vibrantly, love unconditionally. Make friends they would die for - Explore unimaginable possibilities from all warps of life. And to never forget those that held their hands when life got scary. Wiped their tears away after a broken heart. Helped them back on their feet when others let them down. I want my characters to have family and friends - just like mine :)

My passionate leisure pursuit are reading, wondering and writing.

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.

Writing is more about telling other peoples' stories than your own

The self-addressed stamped envelope. The representation of everything that was wrong with the old publishing industry.

Hard core authors are determined about their craft, and they know that building a brand entails hard work. They eat, breathe and live their writing.:

We place memories on pieces of paper to know they will always exist.

I write about love all the time, what a tragedy those stories turn into.

After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn’t feel like work, nor should today’s younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to “dumb down” the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent’s Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.")

Writing is all about self-expression, we want to speak up, to get it off our chest. Whether we make an impact or not that is not for us to decide

You can't disappoint what God has appointed.

And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right.Happy Eighth birthday, blog.

Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

For the length of time it takes to write a book, you need to believe that you’re the only writer in existence; the only one who matters. You need to shut yourself away and allow the creativity to build up, not leak out through worry and comparisons and doubt.

Don't compare the size of your roof with the size of the sky.