Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

It is only through having a stable loving partnership that I began to feel in control enough to attempt a strict writing discipline, to realize something I always knew was simmering underneath.

It is only with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement that you begin to see different examinations of not only Reconstruction but slavery itself, and there is a lesson to be drawn here about how the times influence the writing of history, something that we should never forget.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you're forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.

It is ... possible to read Plato as if he were only discussing reason and not mystical intuition in his writings but ... in that case he seems naively over-impressed by rather ordinary thought processes.

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.

It is possible to live well with dementia and write best-sellers 'like wot I do.

It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

It is possible to combine a story line and plot line in the same work. Usually the storylines comes first, serving as a background to the plot line, but not always.

It is rare and very inspiring that a head of state would make such an investment of time to write a book like this. It is a fine gift to the judokas of the world as well as to those of Russia...Vladimir Putin Sensei and his co-writers have established themselves as gifted writers and contributors to the judo world.

It is really crucial that folks focus on their own representatives. If you call or write a member who does not represent you, I can tell you that contact is going to be a waste of time. You might as well just talk to yourself in your living room.

It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels.

It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.

It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.

It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.

It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.

It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

It is so much hard work writing your first novel. You're not even sure that it is possible to do.

It is sublime to think and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

It is the condition of our present state to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence.

It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’s just me and the character, that’s it, that’s where I want to live my life.

It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland, what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life's rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved on our body.

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.

It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.

It is the winners who write history - their way.

It is the work of the Canadian artist to paint or play or write in such a way that life will be enlarged for himself and his fellow man. The painter will look around him . . . and finding everything good, will strive to communicate that feeling through a portrayal of the essentials of sunlight, or snow, or tree or tragic cloud, or human face, according to his power and individuality.

It is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing is particularly female. Nature might have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

It is true that I didn't write any poetry between 1995 and 2011. The reason for this was probably because I had stayed away from fiction for so long and couldn't tear myself away from it.

It is true that the Drive-By Media is not spending a lot of time covering the Donald Trump Middle East trip. The reason is, they don't want to write or televise any of this because it's in such stark contrast to the pictures they've been painting of Trump. It's so incongruent. It's so inconsistent. In addition to all else, it is the protection of the Barack Obama legacy.

It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.

It is very difficult to understand why in this country [India] so much difference is made between men and women, whereas the Vedanta declares that one and the same conscious Self is present in all beings. You always criticize the women, but say what have you done for their uplift? Writing down Smritis etc., and binding them by hard rules, the men have turned the women into manufacturing machines! If you do not raise the women, who are living embodiment of the Divine Mother, don’t think that you have any other way to rise.

It is very important to be reading as well as writing. A doctor is not going to ignore new surgery practices.

It is very hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal." Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: "It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.

It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

It is well to write love letters. There are certain things for which it is not easy to ask your mistress face to face, like money for instance.

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.