Writing Quotes - Page 82

I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don’t need that question answered.

All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxicants of who cares what kind, drowning themselves in a lack of moderation, raising a glass to lower inhibitions, imbibing spirits to raise their own.

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.

If you can't write a book, write a chapter. If you can't do that, write a page, a sentence or a word. For it is from a single word that books are made.

Until you take a pen to write, then you will see the miracle of writing.

Art is a kind of magic. Creativity is mysterious, even to artists, who might be able to name their inspiration but can't always explain how their influences and experiences came together to create this new thing- this painting, this story, this song. If you break art down to its base elements, there's nothing miraculous about the letters of the alphabet or a drop of paint. But an artist can put those elements together to create something powerful, something that moves us and withstands the test of time. A work that no one but that artist could have imagined, let alone created.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

When one stops writing one becomes oneself again, the person one usually is, in terms of occupations, thoughts, language. Thus I am now me again, I am here, I go about my ordinary business, I have nothing to do with the book, or, to be exact, I entered it, but I can no longer enter it.

There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.

In Sarasota, Florida, Stephen King reminded me of the joy of just writing every day.

Whatever you may have heard, self-publishing is not a short cut to anything. Except maybe insanity. Self-publishing, like every other kind of publishing, is hard work. You don’t wake up one morning good at it. You have to work for that.

If you ever expect to write fairytales, you've got to get your head in the clouds.

If rewriting equals rereading, we must logically conclude that writing is reading. If this is indeed the case, how could we possibly write under a ban on reading? The only way left is mouth-to-mouth – poets and storytellers recite their pieces and before we can commit them to memory, everything vanishes into thin air.

You are what you write.

To unlock the writer's block is to keep writing until you can unknot the "not". If you cannot, then put a can in the plot and unwrap it a lot!

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do---the actual act of writing---turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

ld heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?

Realism can break a writer's heart.

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

No one has yet tested the pencilTo see how many words it can write

Listen to your inner self, it knows you best.

If negative emotions have gain access into your heart, it is because you have given it attention. If memories of pain and hurt dominates your heart, it is because you gave them attention. How can a memory hurt you when it has only happened? It can only hurt you when you give it attention.

I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.

Editors are licensed to be curious.

But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too.

I’m a husband, a father of two, a full-time teacher, and so my writing process mostly involves sitting down and writing, any chance I get, anywhere I am, for as long as life will let me. Music helps. Good light helps. I love quiet and coffee when I can get them. But I can write on a bus, in a dentist office’s waiting room, in bed with a clip-on booklight, almost anywhere. And I try to do at least some every single day.

So for me the creative world isn’t what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it’s something that IS a job. Perhaps that’s why I’m not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I’ve seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I’ve seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: “Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved.”I’m glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me.

Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.

Cesto kazemo da smo emotivno nedostupni,ali nas pogled prevari i kaze da smo uvek dostupni.

I write because he needs to know.

I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end.

Writing barely differs from Talking and Reading. It appoints your hand while they engage your mouth and eyes respectively. The trio need the mind to combine sensible words from a meaningful arrangement of the ‘simple’ A B C to Z.

As with writing by candlelight, one’s greatest ideas come from ‘the flickering’ between darkness and light.

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had."; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999]

Write and your experiences with others. Never underestimate your writings. It can bring hope and inspiration to many people.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

If you would be remembered, write a book worth the reading or live a life worth the writing about.

Proper writing ink comes in a bottle, can be swirled like brandy in a glass, and smells like apple blossom after rain.

Novelty. Security. Novelty wouldn't be a bad title. It had the grandness of abstraction, alerting the reader that large and thoughtful things were to be bodied forth. As yet he had no inkling of any incidents or characters that might occupy his theme; perhaps he never would. He could see though the book itself, he could feel its closed heft and see it opened, white pages comfortably large and shadowed gray by print; dense, numbered, full of meat. He sensed a narrative voice, speaking calmly and precisely, with immense assurance building, building; a voice too far off for him to hear, but speaking. ("Novelty")

There is no value in your promises. They are as hollow as fangs and poisonous as the venom within them once I allowed them into my heart.

The great lie that science has given us is that reality is material.

Writing is a 24/7 job. You live it, eat it, breathe it... the pay can be pretty lousy, but you do it happily, because you love it!!! That, and from the day you started writing the voices in your head became a permanent fixture :) ... oh, missed one out - You sleep it!

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

All writing is filth

Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary.... You once told me you were not a natural writer—my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this. [about The Great Gatsby]

People don’t remember lessons. They remember stories.

(N)ot writing was hard work, almost as hard as writing.

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot—you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don’t like series books that leave you hanging after you’ve finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there’s always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.

So when it comes to Elvis and Joe, I have to trust my instincts, because they’ve gotten me here. And I have to write what I believe in, what I find moving.

I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.

You're the creator of your own future. Get to writing.

Most of the time it may seem like I'm staring into nothingness, but there's a whole world playing out in my head.

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.