Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

Agile methods derive much of their agility by relying on the tacit knowledge embodied in the team, rather than writing the knowleadge down in plans.

A goal that is not in writing is like cigarette smoke: It drifts away and disappears. It is vague and insubstantial. It has no force, effect, or power. But a written goal becomes something that you can see, touch, read, and modify if necessary.

A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.

A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.

Aggression, the writer's main source of energy.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.

A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write.

A good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love it. It's a different side to writing. It's like the fine-tuning.

A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

A good comedy’s very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy.

A good day's writing, when I turn off my computer after I know that I've written okay, or as well as I can write, that's a day well spent.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

A good science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its science content.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.

A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.

A good writer is not someone who knows how to write- but how to rewrite

A good writer should be able to write comedic work that made you laugh, and scary stuff that made you scared, and fantasy or science fiction that imbued you with a sense of wonder, and mainstream journalism that gave you clear and concise information in a way that you wanted it.

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

A good writer writes with a camera, not a pen.

A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

A great novel is worth one thousand films.

A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.

A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'

A hero knows it takes hard work and a long time to get published; a fool thinks it should happen immediately, because he thinks heÕs a hero already.

Ah." He set down his backpack and pulled out their notebook. "You're working on your final project?" "Indirectly," Cath said. "What does that mean?" "Have you ever heard sculptors say that they don't actually sculpt an object; they sculpt away everything that isn't the object?" "No." He sat down. "Well, I'm writing everything that isn't my final project, so that when I actually sit down to write it, that's all that will be left in my mind.

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy.

Ahh! Lady Pillows. So much fluffier than mine.” He took a giant whiff. “Why does everything girlie smell so delightful?” “Because we acknowledge the importance of basic hygiene. And periodically clean our bathrooms.” “Brilliant. I should write that down. After all, it takes a village.

Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Airplanes”. “It was cool to meet people that liked music as much as I did. As soon as we started writing together, it was pretty obvious

Ah, yes! I wrote the "Purple Cow" - I'm sorry, now, I wrote it! But I can tell you anyhow, I'll kill you if you quote it!

Ah, you're the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then.

A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea.

A hundred cabinet-makers in London can work a table or a chair equally well; but no one poet can write verses with such spirit and elegance as Mr. Pope.

A.J. Liebling, one of my heroes, used to say that he could write better than anyone who wrote faster, and faster than anyone who could write better. I'm one nine-hundredth as good as Liebling, but that principle may slightly apply.