Writing Quotes - Page 6

The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.

Henry David Thoreau

Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore — since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now — there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done…Surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). And then she will write him a little note (and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either) and make an assignation for Sunday dusk…She was kind to dogs, faithful to friends, generosity itself to a dozen starving poets, had a passion for poetry. But love — as the male novelists define it — and who, after all, speak with greater authority? — has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity, or poetry. Love is slipping off one’s petticoat and — But we all know what love is…If then, the subject of one’s biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her.

Virginia Woolf

In any case, the goal is the same: to connect.

Nicolas Billon

History has to live with what was here,clutching and close to fumbling all we had -it is so dull and gruesome how we die,unlike writing, life never finishes.

Robert Lowell

But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. ‘The world's a sphere, everyone,’ I wanted to say. ‘The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on its surface. Look up the word 'superficial', when you have a chance.

Mohsin Hamid

Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.

Michel de Montaigne

We see her go through dangerous mood-swings, but I tried never to come right out and say "Annie was depressed and possibly suicidal that day" or "Annie seemed particularly happy that day."If I have to tell you, I lose. If, on the other hand, I can show you a silent, dirty-haired woman who compulsively gobbles cake and candy, then have you draw the conclusion that Annie is in the depressive part of a manic-depressive cycle, I win.

Stephen King

It was never for you, Annie, or all the other people out there who sign their letters “Your number-one fan.” The minute you start to write all those people are at the other end of the galaxy, or something. It was never for my ex-wives, or my mother, or for my father. The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

Stephen King

Acceptance and validation are the fuels of the future.

Kevin James Breaux

…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.

Ernest Hemingway

...it has been demonstrated through years of workshops that the Artist Within tends to make the same mistakes as the artist within everybody else.

Howard Mittelmark

When you write, you can write yourself into the world of your dreams or the world of your nightmares. The choice is yours!

N.B. Williams

Writing a sincere narrative account of personal adversities and misfortunes is one way to become acquainted with the rifts of a person’s inmost self, the smothered pieces of want that lie separate and undetected amid the customs, habits, vices, and tedium that encases us in the hubbub of daily living.

Kilroy J. Oldster

...and though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say.

Natalie Goldberg

Productive writing begins from understanding the idea.

Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba

Elegant writers depict intricacy with simplicity.

Coco J. Ginger

those who does not read, they miss the important aspects of life.

Bijaya

Words are a means to an end. Those who chase after them inevitably fail to reach that end.

Anthony Marais

Writing for me is never about quantity. It's always about quality.

Raymond Bolton

A writer who intermingles his own opinions with that of his characters is less consequent than a fascistic communist.

Kevin Focke

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again.

Dori Ann Dupré

If there is method here, it is hard to discern it. Let it be repeated: the use of capitals is a matter not or rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.

H. W. Fowler

I think the best thing about being a writer is getting to dream. It's constantly viewing life through the "what if?" lens.

Kevin J. Fitzgerald

History is the roadmap to a better tomorrow. Destroying it is getting rid of any chance of what not to do for future generations.

Jason E. Hodges

If your writing fails to move the emotional needle, you are not reaching your readers.

Jack R. Cotner

When I write I face my demons, and defeat them.

Jackie G. Mills

The main thing is finding the time to sit down and write. You have to make the time.

Lisa Newton

When I read my writing, am amazed by what I have captured in a given moments.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Is not our purest form of writing that done without the taint of money?

Andrew Barger

When I have written my last word, I will have taken my last breath.

Paige Skyler

I use only my penned imagination to hold my readers captive.

Paul W. Feenstra

He wrote very well in those days, as it happens, much better than he does now. He had absolute convictions, and style is nothing more than the absolute conviction of possessing a style.

Ricardo Piglia

‪Write only if you wish to read it again and again while falling in love with it... ‬

Ramana Pemmaraju

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.

Sahara Sanders

I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.

Alan Garner

Writing allows you the unique and uncensored expression of whatever wants to be spoken.

Deborah Sandella

It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.

Tarang Sinha

One single letter cures the blank page.

Stephanie Ayers

Writing is like exercise. You have to work at it to see results.

Katie Merkel

Write something today that you future self will be proud of.

T.N. Suarez

Don't imitate. Find your own writing voice and hone it until it is yours alone.

Christopher Holliday

I left my novels for better times, when I could dedicate the energy and enjoy the inspiration I feel while planning them; like the most delicious cherries on a cake one left for later so they can be savored to the utmost.

Sahara Sanders

There is only one secret to great writing and that's great writing.

Chloe Thurlow

And yes, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Faulkners and the Capotes. Drank while writing. Drink next to the typewriter. But the longer I lived in Brooklyn, the more writers I met, and I guess I was just too drunk to put it together before but now I realized about half of them were sober. So you could be a writer and be sober. Very interesting

Jeanne Darst

It's impossible to be a good writer if you haven't lived badly. A past life of drinking heavily, fighting and whoring all help to ease those words onto the page.

Ken Scott

To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while.

Fernando Pessoa

The more I drink the better I write and the more I write the better I drink.

Shawn Hatfield

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there’s a difference, at one in the morning while you’re hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy.

Stuart Connelly

What fascinates me about writing is wrestling thought into reality and creating a new world that is forever.

Dennis R. Miller

Maybe the key to finding the perfect song is simply rewriting the lyrics.

Kandi Steiner

Why do you write like you're running out of time?

Lin-Manuel Miranda

It was our passion for words and our ardent desire to write that drew me and Michael together, and the same that drove us apart.Michael wanted to be a great playwright, like the former master Molière. He had high ambitions and scorned what I wrote as frivolous and feminine.‘All these disguises and duels and abductions,’ he said contemptuously, one day a year or so after our affair began, slapping down the pile of paper covered with my sprawling handwriting. ‘All these desperate love affairs. And you wish me to take you seriously.’‘I like disguises and duels.’ I sat bolt upright on the edge of my bed. ‘Better than those dreary boring plays you write. At least something happens in my stories.’‘At least my plays are about something.’‘My stories are about something too. Just because they aren’t boring doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy.’‘What are they about? Love’ He clasped his hands together near his ear and fluttered his eyelashes.’‘Yes, love. What’s wrong with writing about love? Everyone longs for love.’‘Aren’t there enough love stories in the world without adding to them?‘Isn’t there enough misery and tragedy?’Michael snorted with contempt.‘What’s wrong with wanting to be happy?‘It’s sugary and sentimental.’‘Sugary? I’m not sugary.’ I was so angry that I hurled my shoes at his head.

Kate Forsyth

The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.

Philip Pullman

The Other Worlds which fairy tales explore open a way for writers and storytellers to speak in Other terms, especially when the native inhabitants of the imaginary places do not belong to an established living faith and therefore do not command belief or repudiation. The tongue can be very free when it is speaking outside the jurisdiction of religion.

Marina Warner

Take your hands off my sentences, asshole. I sweat blood for that shit.

Scott Adlerberg

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said "It is the trade entering his body.

Annie Dillard

For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.

Philip Roth

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.

Neil Gaiman

Always speak the truth - think before you speak - and write it down afterwards.

Lewis Carroll

There is indeed one person who can help solve “writer’s block”. His name is Mr Johnnie Walker.

Ashwin Sanghi

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Writing Quotes - Page 6

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