Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it's all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.

The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.

The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness.

The great thing about Coulson is that he's a little bit like a party game, where the next person who gets ahold of him gets to write another sentence. I'm constantly learning more and more about the guy.

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.

The great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. We all screw up, but the women I write about don't have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

The great thing about writing is that...you can do all these antisocial things and you get paid for them and nobody ever arrests you because they're all make-believe. Then that way if you were actually ever driven to do any of those things, the pressure's off because you'd have already written them down. It's therapy.

The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.

The great thing about writing for a younger audience is that they will give it to you straight with their responses. They'll tell you exactly what they liked and didn't like, and when they're enthusiastic, they're unashamedly enthusiastic. They'll talk to you about your characters as if they were real people, which is wonderful.

The great thing about string quartets is the players are kind of like family. They work really well as a unit, so you can write things that let them use those talents of association and intuition-all the things they’ve developed together as a group.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is.

The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

The Greek word pseudepigrapha is a Greek word meaning 'falsely superscribed,' or what we moderns might call writing under a pen name. The classification, 'OT Pseudepigrapha,' is a label that scholars have given to these writings.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo.

The guitar is my favorite and the one, I guess, I'm best at. But I play enough of the different instruments to be able to write with them and to, hopefully, to make myself look impressive on stage.

The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject.

The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years - responses to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters - stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of discontinuity (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks take me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years.

The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.

The guys that write Once Upon a Time were major writers on Lost, and we had lunch when I started on OUAT and the first thing I said to them was, "I spent five years on Lost, you have to tell me, was my character good or bad?" They looked at me and said, "We have no idea." That's why you have to make your own backstory. I decided Widmore was the evilest of the evil, but in the end, not even the writers knew.

The guy who sits at the keyboard and types is so much smarter than I am. I think I got into writing so that I could spend as much time with that guy as possible.

The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

The habits of craft, developed day in and day out over a working lifetime, create moments of astonishment, sublime and magical effects, precisely because the writer is not thinking overtly about making art.

The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

The habit of prayer communicates a penetrating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the smile, the tears,--to all one says, or does, or writes.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

The hardest bits of my book to read were the easiest bits to write because they were the most immediate. Probably because I had never stopped thinking about them on some level. Those bits I was just channelling and those were the most exciting writing days. The bits I found harder were the bits that happen in between, you know, the rest of living. There were whole years, whole houses, that I just got rid of.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone we know.

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

The hardest thing to write was explaining what anxiety feels like. Every time I'd try to really write about what it feels like to have an anxiety attack, I would actually have an anxiety attack. It was good material but so incredibly uncomfortable.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

The hardest part for me during the creation stage is actually putting words on paper that make sense and tell my story the way I see it. I sometimes feel I am slogging through quicksand when I write.

The hardest thing about writing is writing.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

The hardest period for a writer is the period in-between writing. That's when you can go crazy if you don't allow the creative juices to flow.

The hardest thing is spending twelve hours a day accommodating the rest of the world, then going home at night and criticizing it. I would be curious about what I'd write if I didn't have to worry about offending.

The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?