Writing Quotes - Page 72

Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.

I was born into this torrid world a degenerate, eternally condemned a vessel of belligerency, destined to one day end. But despite my mortal disposition, I possess my voice. I have that which is gifted to me from the bosom of the gods. The beauty of self-expression. And through this gift I will come to know and share the true nature of reality

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

When a man talks from the heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.

Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.

Portland was a dream both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense, both tangible and not - a fleeting affair you want to hold on to but can't, so you try memorizing her every detail only to fail to do so in the consumption, in the savoring, in the absorbing of yourself into her. When she's gone, she comes to you in snippets, replaying in your mind like a fragmented picture show.

We write to go on living, after we have died.

Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.

This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling.

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

Look," she said, and just that. That was the only time she opened her mouth, because she wanted to say something unnecessary, something that wouldn't be important or memorable, so I wouldn't have to remember her voice.We looked at the veil then, the thing that had turned her this way, and we smiled.

The shock of recognition is a moment of excitement that shakes the soul. It may be hard to describe, but like other forms of love, you will know it when you feel it

You cannot write if you are not angry

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do.

I hate writing, I love having written.

Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.

A great story can change the world.

Be fearless. Write what you want. Write how you want. Create art.

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

The greatest futility! says the congregator, "The greatest futility! Everything is futile!" What does a person gain from all his hard work- At which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and another cometh forth, but the earth remains the same.

Without imagination, there would be no creativity. Without creativity, there would be nothing.

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher who whacked my hand with a stick each time I struck the wrong key. I learned a few pieces, yes, but eventually my pen compelled me to write too much and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind compelled me to climb trees too often. Sorry mom. Coincidentally, books come from trees and flipping the pages sounds like wind through leaves... hhhmmmm... I guess I’m still just climbing trees now, but in a different way!

When you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - well that's memoirs.

Good fiction writers have an instinctive understanding of human nature. That's what makes stories and characters captivating. Good spiritual writers share what they sincerely practice themselves.

Language dazzles and deceives because it is masked by faces, because we see it emerging from the lips, because lips please and eyes beguile. But words on paper, black on white, reveal the naked soul.

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.

I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM.

When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, "weaving fearful vision" ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.

I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don't. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please."The problem is finding the space and time when this engagement stops, and calm, quiet, thinking and reading of longer-form arguments, novels, essays can begin. Worse, this also needs time for the mind to transition out of an instant gratification mode to me a more long-term, thoughtful calm. I find this takes at least a day of detox. Getting weekends back has helped. But if there were a way to channel the amazing insights of blogging into the longer, calmer modes of thinking ... we'd be getting somewhere."I'm working on it.

It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well.....problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read.

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

We all know writing is a reclusive, lonely endeavour. It just is. But nobody writes alone.

Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn’t." — Lucille Ball

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

People should love in the same way that they should write; insistently, fervently, forever.

Freedom comes from focus, focus brings freedom. Focus on fear you will always be in prison, focus on faith and is nothing the world can keep you knocked down.

I make you see things that aren't really there and you believe every word

You can't be beautiful and a writer, because to be a writer you have to be the one doing the looking; if you're beautiful people will be looking at you.

I am a drinker with writing problems.

Offence is an event, offended is a decision. Offence and offended we have to live through it but to stay offended? To live in that place denies the very nature of the salvation that you claimed to have received.

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.[From a 1986 Fangoria interview]

No poem ever bought a hamburger, or not too many.

I write because I cannot NOT write.

I won't stop writing until I am known as the Kurt Cobain of literature!

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

technology murdered childhood.

As I quietly stare off into space, eyes glazed over and brow thoughtfully taut, know that I am going about my business.  I am a storyteller.  Daydreaming is the best part of my job.

Writing is easy. Writing is hard. It's a breeze and a struggle, just like life.

As they say, it’s possible to kill and to revive someone using a proper speech. I agree with the statement because I know for sure it is true.

I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie.

Restrictions and writing shouldn't mix. Let your mind be open. Let it be a creative canvas.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like all-embracing compassion.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.

The pages of a book are given life only as they are opened

But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what we do. We are scribes to the ticking of the days, and we have a job to do. We are not at peace unless we are doing it.