Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

If rejections were cash, I'd be rich

If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have mythic proportions.

If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. And if someone asks me the inevitable next dumb question, “Why do you write the way you do?” I must answer that I wish to make my hatred acceptable because my hatred is much of me, if not the best part. Writing is a way of making the writer acceptable to the world—every cheap, dumb, nasty thought, every despicable desire, every noble sentiment, every expensive taste.

If she says goodbye, someone else will say hi.

If someone knew equally as much about the ins and outs of your home, it would not be your home.

If somebody tells you a rule, break it. That's the only thing to move things forward.

If somebody tells you a rule, break it. That's the only way to move things forward.

If that's the example you want set, you be the example.

If the boy who draws lets you look over his shoulder. If the poet smiles and shows you her words. If the girl who sings for the shower only, hums a song in front of you. Know that you’re no longer a person but the air and dust that fills their lungs. When the world perishes, and all things cease to exist, you’ll remain inside an ink stain, a paint brush, a song. Poem N. 8

If someone with talent creates something, it's art. When someone with no talent creates something, it's crap.

If something was worth writing down, it was worth writing down in full. And she had a horror of lists--grocery lists, Christmas card lists, and most grisly of all, to-do lists. Lists, like appointment books, were nails driven into the future. She knew this was an odd objection to be raised by a person whose daily life was utterly predictable, who never threw caution, or anything else, to the winds, who never packed light, because she never packed at all. Still, the future was a sleeping monster, not to be poked.

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

If something unusual is what you really see and really feel, and if that’s what does happen to you in your real life, how is THAT called FICTION? One simple reason... that it’s the only way the society would agree to call it “normal,” based on the current level of development of their mentality.

If someone tells you something is impossible, make it possible.

If the director himself writes the script or screenplay of the drama, movie etc., the direction becomes perfect because he already imagined each shot nicely in his brain while writing the screenplay!

If theme is the soul of a story, then the characters are its beating heart.

If the novel is dead, I'm a necrophiliac.

If the most High grant thee to live, thou shall see after the third trumpet that the sun shall suddenly shine again in the night, and the moon thrice in the day:

‪If the overuse of adjectives is frowned upon in writing, why are expletives—the ones commonly used as adjectives—embraced?

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence. 'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.' Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page? As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick. Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly.

If therefore that which is sown be not turned upside down, and if the place where the evil is sown passes not away, then cannot it come that is sown with good?

If there is method here, it is hard to discern it. Let it be repeated: the use of capitals is a matter not or rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it. . . . for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery.

If the reader needs a dictionary to read your book then the dictionary may turn out to be a more interesting read.

If there's a will, there's a way! I feel larger than LIFE--and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders....as my fingers tap on my computer late into the night..

If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.

If there’s a single idea I emphasize when people ask about writing, it’s that there’s no right way to produce a book. But I do think that whatever you do, you should do regularly, whether it’s waking up at midnight and drinking vodka or waking up at dawn and drinking tea, whether it’s sitting in a monkish study or writing on the back of a flatbed truck. The analogy I like is children’s literature: in a lot of children’s books, there’s a huge institutional structure (Hogwarts, for example) whose presiding safety allows the children’s imagination to run free. The more consistent your habits are – and this ties into having your tools nailed down – the more secure your brain will be to run free and create.

If there’s true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.

If there's something I'm not good at, it's usually because I just organically despise it. I can't help that. I'm fabulous at too many other things to waste my time faking it.

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.

If thinking should precede acting, then acting must succeed thinking.

If this is a dream, the details are good. It's the absolute truth. They are a novelist's details... but in dreams, perhaps everyone is a novelist. How is one to know?

If they are good characters, they have minds of their owns. If they are great characters, they go stomping off into the sunset and leave you to pick up the trash.

If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.

If ur laptop doesnt smell like fire then ur losing.

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.

If we can't have world peace, I'll settle for a quiet room.

If we don't value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?

If words had cost money, Tom couldn't have used them more sparingly. The adjectives were purely descriptive, relating to form and colour, and were used to present the objects under consideration, not the young explorer's emotions. Yet through this austerity one felt the kindling imagination, the ardour and excitement of the boy, like the vibration in a voice when the speaker strives to conceal his emotion by using only the conventional phrases.

If we want to write to heal, our words matter -- especially our positive words.

If we were to understand how important it is to say something and say it well, maybe we wouldn’t write a single word, but that would be tragic.

If writers write not just with paper and ink or a word processor but with their own life's blood, then I think something like this is perhaps always the case. A book you write out of the depths of who you are, like a dream you dream out of those same depths, is entirely your own creation. All the words your characters speak are words that you alone have put into their mouths, just as every situation they become involved in is one that you alone have concocted for them. But it seems to me that nonetheless that a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.

If writing didn't create emotional risk, then it wouldn't be worth doing.

If words are not music, they have failed your song.

If words are to be uttered, they would be from behind the partition. Unaccountable is distance, time to transport from this present minute. If words are to be sounded, impress through the partition in ever slight measure to the other side the other signature the other hearing the other speech the other grasp.

If you are a Sensitive Intuitive, then you are also a born healer. Writing is one of your heart's passions, but only one. You also have a life purpose to use your healer abilities to be of service to the world.

If where you are is worthwhile then where you are from doesn't matter.

If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don’t suffocate your heart.

If you aren't polite when giving criticism you will come off as an awful person and if you aren't polite when receiving criticism you will come off as an awful person.

If you are writing fiction, think like a god. Release all the power of your imagination; create worlds and destroy them at your will, create as many miracles as your story needs