Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

Work at your craft, write daily, and follow your dreams because dreams do come true.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write. Why me?

Work ethic is one of the biggest things my father taught me. That man worked like every day, every day, 9 to 5, well 9 to 9 in his case, but he would treat it as if it was a 9 to 5 job. He would clock in. He would put in his hours. That is how you can write those you know incredibly long books that unfortunately there is not much market for anymore, but that is also how you can explore an idea on a deeper level than we get in our media surface these days. It's tough.

Work extra hard on the beginning of your story, so it snares reader's instantly. And know how you're going to end your story before you start writing. Without a sense of direction, you can get lost in the middle.

Working with artists and other poets has made me aware that there was a bigger "me" that I hadn't been quite aware of. Plus we had a good time. It's so much fun to write, for example, with a big brush on a giant piece of paper and to help create visually attractive and surprising objects, which is not what you normally do when you're writing a poem. It's wonderful to create these pieces with artists.

Working on 'Raising Hope' is a very hurry-up-and-wait activity, and I just always liked the idea of being as productive as I can be. I write because I don't just want that time to dissolve, where I'm sitting in a trailer staring blankly at the paintings of moccasins that came with the trailer.

Working with people you adore and love. There's just a sense, all the way through all of the movies [Planet of Apes], that you're very rarely in a position where you have great material that you're passionate about and a big audience who love it, and the detail and nuance, and the exquisiteness of the fantastic actors and director with great writing.

Working on Drive, a lot of fun. This is Tim Minear whom I've worked with before on Firefly of course. He called me up and said I've got a part for you that you will love and I love Tim's writing. I love his stories. I love his characters, his dialogue. He has a knack for reveals and he has a knack for moments.

Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.

Working with somebody who has a more interesting life than I do - and getting to take on that life temporarily - is an endlessly interesting way to have the experience of writing memoir.

Work is style, and there is style without thought; not in theory, only in fact. When I take a sentence in my hand, raise it to the light, rub my hand across it, disjoin it, put it back together again with a comma added, raising the pitch in the front part; when I rub the grain of it, comb the fur of it, re-assemble the bones of it, I am making something that carries with it the sound of a voice, the firmness of a hand. Maybe little more.

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.

Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your nerves.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves.

Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.

Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better.

Work on one thing at a time until finished.

Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris.

Wouldn't want to write the X-Men, and I suppose the X-Men is the ultimate Marvel comic, and I really wouldn't want to go anywhere near it at all, although on the other had I wouldn't mind having a crack at something like the Punisher.

Wouldn't that be wonderful if I could do that? And that way, I could walk with the muse, rather than walk without her. The novel would write itself.

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.

Write down the most important things you have to do tomorrow.

Write down the things you like most about them (don't expect change from them). Law of attraction will not put you in the same space together if you frequencies don't match.

Write first. Worry about getting an agent or publisher later. Write it first. Prove you can do it and then others will listen. Tons of people talk about books they want to write. Far fewer are those who actually complete that vision. Don’t be a talker.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

Write great songs that sound amazing if sung and played on the piano or acoustic guitar. Always encourage sing-alongs! Be prolific! Say "Yes" to new collaborations because you never know where it could lead.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Write it down today, put it away, make sense of it tomorrow.

Write like you write, like you can't help but write, and your voice will become yours and yours alone. It'll take time but it'll happen as long as you let it. Own your voice, for your voice is your own. Once you know where your voice lives, you no longer have to worry so much about being derivative.

Write me as one who loves his fellow men.

Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money.

Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it.

Write 10 times: 'Fear is my friend. Fear is the energy to do my best in a new situation.' You don't have to believe it; just write it.

Write about the truth. If you write about the truth, somebody's living that. Not just somebody, there's a lot of people.

Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.

Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.

Write a paper promising salvation, make it a "structured" something or a "virtual" something, or "abstract," "distributed" or "higher-order" or "applicative" and you can almost be certain of having started a new cult.

Write as you like, use the rhythms that come out, try different instruments, sit at the piano, destroy the metric, shout instead of singing, blow your guitar and ring the horn. Hate mathematics, and love eddies. Creation is a bird without a flight plan, that will never fly in a straight line.