Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

It ends when you’re ready for a new beginning.

It feels good to read book. But it is grander to write a book.

I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen

I tend to be a little - just a little - more heavy-handed with the sex scenes, and Tamara (Thorne) tends slightly more toward humor. But the joy of it is, when we write together, it draws out the best in both of us.

It gathers emotionally inside you, in a strange way a by-product of struggle, of a willingness to do anything, try anything, expose yourself to anything — staying in motion because sooner or later those ripples will cause change.

I tell myself I’m writing to someone, but most of the time I’m really just writing to that part in myself they have carved in me.

I tell the truth,' she said. 'But I tell it slant.

I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.

It feels good to read book. But it is grander to write book.

It had been so long since I'd written, really written, that I'd forgotten what it felt like--how it changed things, shifted everything. I'd forgotten how writing surprises you--how you sit down feeling one thing and come out feeling another--and that I'd never heard my dad's voice in my head like this before, never known I could feel this close to him again, that this letter from him might ever exist. But here it was.

It feels great to read but greater to write.

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

It has been said that Shakespeare, the great delineator of human character, has failed in distinguishing his principal women—and that such as he meant to be amiable are all equally gentle and good. How difficult then it is for a novelist to give to one of his heroines any very marked feature which shall not disfigure her! Too much reason and self-command destroy the interest we take in her distresses. It has been observed, that Clarissa is so equal to every trial as to diminish our pity. Other virtues than gentleness, pity, filial obedience, or faithful attachment, hardly belong to the sex.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect--a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960)

It has been often said that writing is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. In my experience, this is true. But, in my opinion, it is useless without that 1 percent. It's like an engine without fuel -- can't get anywhere without it. Or like a lighthouse without a light on top -- doesn't guide anyone in to home or safe harbor.

I think, because…well, I like the idea of coming up with a story that never existed before, but I don’t really want to be in charge. I don’t want to be famous. I guess I like the idea of sitting in the dark and knowing that I created the thing on screen, that it’s my story, but, like, no-one else has to know it was me. Does that make sense?

I think horror, when done well, is one of the most direct and honest ways to get to the core of the human experience because terror reduces all of us to our most authentic forms.

I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time.

I think every writer has a little freak in ‘em.

I think erotica goes nicely with horror, and so do romance and history - but to be honest, if it's got horror, I'm happy!

I think I had two choices: I could either work a nine-to-five job and just get by until I retired, or I could write. There isn’t anything else I’m passionate about enough to put this much work into.

I think it’s important to present yourself as a professional. While writing a good book is critical, nothing will cancel that out faster than behaving like an amateur. I cringe every time I see an author arguing with a reader who left a poor review, or fighting with their friends on Facebook … or publicly bashing their agents or publishers.

I think it's incomparably sweet when someone writes something for you.. even if it doesn't rhyme or even if it isn't very amorous.. even two lines of hatred written for you acknowledges the fact that someone spent a little of his time thinking about you.

I think of rounds of editing as hammer time. Then, when they interrupt my writing, I can say... *shakes head* Nah, I just can't do it. Although when I come across a brilliant line, I do think, Can't touch this. And when I'm worried I'm overwriting a scene, I think, Hammer, don't hurt 'em.

I think maybe today a poem I hope after breakfast I start trying pulling it out of my own gut mostly by force

I think it's very painful, and that it's better not to have any doubts. I envy those who don't have any; I envy them a lot. They are happy people.

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

I think one of the best gifts you could offer me, as a writer, is to engage with my words, to tell me how they felt to you. To let me, for a moment, see my words through your eyes. And it feels like you read my words so carefully, that you were gentle with them, nurturing. I feel loved and seen by the way you responded. Thank you for caring for the words that rise from my soul.

I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams of childhood trauma—that becoming a writer (or a painter, actor, director, dancer, and so on) is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force—a force so great the knife is not really cutting at all but bludgeoning and breaking (and after two or three of these gargantuan swipes it may succeed in breaking itself…which may be what happened to such disparate writers as Ross Lockridge and Robert E. Howard). Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle. No writer, painter, or actor—no artist—is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is “genius”), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.

I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good.

I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good."--Leigh Bardugo

I think one should pay so much attention to technique, don't you? Like learning to draw before you paint.

I think poor poetry writing skills are excused when you’re simply trying to flush out emotions.

I think that thinking of our material universe, the one we perceive with our sense, as the only thing is not only foolish, it is arrogant. As well as, if I may add, in contradiction to theoretical physics. I believe — I have always believed — that there is meaning and purpose to life, although we may not understand that meaning and purpose. I think we catch glimpses of it here and there, and I honestly think that the universe communicates it to us, if we can listen for it — if our perceptions are finely enough tuned. All my life, I’ve had a strong sense of purpose, of being here for a reason that I might not at that moment understand, but that something, somewhere, understood. The times I’ve been unhappy in my life are when I’ve gone off the path, when I’ve realized that I made a choice taking me away from the way I was supposed to go. I remember what it was like to go to law school and to feel, so deeply that it went to my core, as though I was in the wrong place, as though I had stepped off the path. The path itself feels narrow and rocky, sometimes. Sometimes it feels as though I’m walking along a gulley, or a high cliff with winds. But it feels like a path, as though I’m going somewhere. I don’t know how to talk about this except by saying that we have instincts, and our instincts tell us these things, and we have to trust them.

I think the hardest thing about writing is writing." [Interview clip in the In Memoriam section of the 85th Academy Awards ceremony, Feb. 24, 2013]

I think... the most brilliant thing about being a writer,is that if you don't like the way the world is, you can create your own.

I think the novel is a wonder....it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality....And as for the sheer writing, it's astonishing. [About The Great Gatsby]

I think the reason why I don't read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand words and at the end, sum it up in one sentence; I am more for the one sentence. I am more for the essence. It's like how you need a truckload of roses to extract one drop of rose oil; I don't want to bother with the truckload of roses because I would rather walk away with the drop of rose oil. So in my mind, I have written two hundred books. Why? Because I have with me two hundred vials with one drop of essence in each!

I think there really is no other way to write a long, serious novel. You work, shelve it for a while, work, shelve it again, work some more, month after month, year after year, and then one day you read the whole piece through and, so far as you can see, there are no mistakes. (The minute it's published and you read the printed book you see a thousand.) This tortuous process is not necessary, I suspect, for the writing of a popular novel in which the characters are not meant to have depth and complexity, where character A is consistently stingy and character B is consistently openhearted and nobody is a mass of contradictions, as are real human beings. But for a true novel there is generally no substitute for slow, slow baking. We've all heard the stories of Tolstoy's pains over Anna Karenina, Jane Austen's over Emma, or even Dostoevsky's over Crime and Punishment, a novel he grieved at having to publish prematurely,though he had worked at it much longer than most popular-fiction writers work at their novels.

I think the suicide rate is so high among writers because we force ourselves to stand still, take an outsider’s perspective, and realise how quickly a life passes by, and how futile we are. The exhilarating upside is that at a moment’s glance all your worries fade away, and you can work on making the most of it.

I thought about how all that mattered, in all entirety, and all I wanted, and all I could see anything being worth anything for, was being a writer.

I think today is a day for the heart. What do you think?

I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body.

I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

I thought it was a novel.” “It is.” “What’s it about??” “You’ll have to buy it to find out, but it’s got everything: love, death and an amusing dog.” “This one’s got a recipe for apple crumble,” I said. “Don’t you love that about the novel? The capaciousness?” he said.

It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men.

It is a dangerous thing to substitute reading or writing for living. Live first, then write.

It is always easier to edit what has been written than to write what has not been done.