Writing Quotes - Page 32

No one ever developed their character by arranging their experiences in such a way that only ‘good’ things are allowed to happen to them. Character is not purchased with a dance in the street. It is not cheap, and it’s hard to come by, owing partly to the fact that it is the heir of disappointment, frustration, betrayal and deceit. However, it is not the inheritance that matters so much as what you do with it. In the face of seemingly insurmountable problems what do you do, and why do you do it? The same holds for dramatic characters whose strength, courage, insight and wisdom have to be earned.

Billy Marshall-Stoneking

Yeah, episodic doesn't work. Your coolest character needs something big and meaningful to do. Otherwise, well, it's just narrative shit.

Don Roff

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

Don Roff

Even your sweetest character has claws, no matter how well they may be retracted and hidden (hidden even from herself).

Eric Maisel Ph.D.

My characters will happily march off a cliff if it is in them to do so, but may the gods help me if I write that the character is an alcoholic when they are not. They will fight me at every turn and it is their domain. A writer cannot win against a stubborn character.

Thomm Quackenbush

Create a character with an obsession, then follow.

Ray Bradbury

I'm not much of a believer in the so-called character study; I think that in the end, the story should always be the boss.

Stephen King

I don't know who a character is till I look into their eyes.

Luke Taylor

Personal discontent and lost illusion is the catalysis and the principal theme for every book ever written. The sign of maturity is when a person finally realizes that they would rather live truthfully than persist indulging his or her comforting delusions.

Kilroy J. Oldster

Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.

Flannery O'Connor

As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

Milan Kundera

Every great writer is a great reader.

Lailah Gifty Akita

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

Lailah Gifty Akita

I wish to keep writing.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I am determined to write daily.

Lailah Gifty Akita

The best stories come from deep within us and are of us. Either our inner child comes out to play and makes all things possible, or we mold our characters and events from our own experiences, or our dreams of wanting to experience.

Judith Kohnen

A journey of the mind – a written vision quest – has only one goal: to interact with the world and attempt to develop the dormant intellectual and spiritual awareness of the author.

Kilroy J. Oldster

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal - a companion.

Elif Shafak

My writings are my letters to the universe, who loved me like a mother.

Debasish Mridha

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

Emma Abdullah

Storytelling? God started that. Discovery. Lust. Murder. Revenge. Power. Sin. Redemption. Forgiveness. Miracles. We simply retell the stories in the language of our generation.

Dennis R. Miller

For me, all writing -- storytelling and style -- gets back to the Bible, Twain and Hemingway, and not in that order.

Dennis R. Miller

have written my first grateful thanks for a fresh new day in a new year.

Lailah Gifty Akita

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

Terry Tempest Williams

Writing is a product of silence.

Carrie Latet

Reading haiku is as much an art as writing it. The reader needs to pause and listen to the silences, to feel the spaces between the words, and to journey into the depths of many multi-colored worlds.

Harley King

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

Raymond Chandler

I would rather spend money on something, that fulfills me for eternity. Rather, than something that fulfills me for only an hour or two.

Mary Sage Nguyen

To my faithful readers, because a book is like a pie—the only thing more satisfying than cooking up the story is knowing that somebody might be out there eating it up with a spoon.

Sarah Weeks

Don't be afraid to write. I think a lot of writers of all ages have a fear that they aren't any good at writing. That fear is normal. I feel it. Most writers who care about what they are writing feel it. When you feel like you're not good enough, write anyway. It's just a pesky bug that's whispering lies. The best way to swat the bug is with your pen.

Tanya Anderson

How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?" "You'll have to test me out." "You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it." "Rain," I say. "That's not your real name." "Does it matter?" "Well, it makes me wonder what else isn't real." "That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living." "And?" "And"-- she shrugs--"I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that.

Bret Easton Ellis

I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)

Gillian Flynn

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it.

Jamaica Kincaid

Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. “You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won’t get mixed up.

Betty Smith

A lie set down on paper in wet ink becomes the truth when dry.

Manhattan (writer)

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

Betty Smith

Wondering is positive illusion.

Lailah Gifty Akita

A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person.

Sandra Chami Kassis

She said that in writing anything, you must be perfectly honest.

Lesley Choyce

The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.

J.G. Ballard

Honesty is vulnerability. Sadly, not everyone can handle someone’s honesty. However, lying allows people to be comfortable.

Shannon L. Alder

I'll only tell you what matters. And, the truth is, everything matters.

Crystal Woods

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

Ray Bradbury

I suppose one has to be desperate, to be a successful writer. One has to reach a rock-bottom at which one can afford to let everything go hang. One has got to damn the public, chance one's living, say what one thinks, and be oneself. Then something may come out.

T.H. White

All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.

Haruki Murakami

Honesty is easier when you have no face and no real name. And honesty, for me, is very easy on paper.

Katherine Reay

You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible?

Jennifer Donnelly

I write because I'm free,because I can,because I will. I write because I must,because I'm breathing,because I'd go crazy otherwise,because it's who I am.I write to make a statement,to share my thoughts,to discover myself,to express my ideas.But most of all, I write for future generations.I write for love. I write to inspire.I write to encourage. I write for me.

Nadège Richards

It is the kernel of truth in every story that makes its writing beautiful beyond standards.

Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate.

Robert Brault

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.

Niall Williams

The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man

Tan Twan Eng

It’s all I’ve seen, all I’ve been through,” I said, “that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I don't write to chase away my demons ~I wield my pen as a weapon...calling those bastards to war!

Muse

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

Nathan Filer

Actors are good liars, writers are good liars with good memories.

Daniel Keys Moran

But as I began to write this book, I realised that without the whole truth my life would have no power, no real meaning. With the help of my mother, the memories of our lives in North Korea and China cane back to me like scenes from a forgotten nightmare. Some of the images reappeared with a terrible clarity; others were hazy, or scrambled like a deck of cards spilled on the floor. The process of writing has been the process of remembering, and of trying to make sense out of those memories.

Yeonmi Park

I write because I can remember and to keep those memories alive. I write for pleasure. I write because I must.

F.M. Burgett

The womb of the world births us. My filth comes from the same earthwork that gives rise to all stories. My interior light connects me with all the other creatures that inhabit this world of rocks, air, grass, woods, and water. My genetic code links me inextricably with all of nature. I enter the medley in the river of life with the ability to respond as life unfolds before my childlike eyes. My homemade medicinal poultice might not be of any benefit to other people. Nonetheless, we should each write our stories because each of us aims to attain a greater degree of awareness of our own authenticity. We owe a moral obligation to our family, friends, and ourselves as well as to the community to make a determined effort to wring the most out of life. We must applaud all efforts to investigate the human condition. Even if my writing amounts to nothing more than a clumsy attempt to travel the same tracks other people burnished with much more insight, clarity, precision, and style, it is an act of self-definition to ascribe to any philosophy. Philosophy represents a living charter; it is a life of action.

Kilroy J. Oldster

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away.

Bret Easton Ellis

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Writing Quotes - Page 32

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