Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

The goal is not writing. The goal is being a human being writing.

The goal is to be both disciplined and loose, so that the writing does not turn into a task or a chore. To leave myself behind, along with the mechanics, and disappear into the lives of my characters.

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.

The golden rule would be to write a great, authentic song that is well produced and it will find its home. The audience can feel whether or not the artist is being genuine in their music. It's up to the artist to have the courage to reveal their truth through their songs.

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land.

The good stories, of course, write themselves. And somebody wants to know who are the really good writers, and how many of them there are. There aren't any. Most of the writers are likeable frauds. Some are unlikable frauds.

The good thing about being a writer is that you don't need anything except for a laptop. You can really do your own work and if you're not manically compelled to write all the time before you do it professionally, it's probably not a business for you anyway.

The good thing about writing a true story is that you don't have to worry about giving an impression of realism.

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake.

The good part of writing is where it gets out of your control and turns into something else. You look at it and think "Whoa, where did that come from? That wasn't what I meant to write, but it's more interesting than what I was intending. Which part of my subconscious or my experience did that come from?" Often the answer isn't clear, and often the line between fiction and fact isn't clear, either.

The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.

The grandest seduction of all is the myth that DOING EVERYTHING BETTER gets us where we want to be. It gets us somewhere, certainly, but not anywhere worth being

The great artist is the simplifier.

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.

The great authors share their souls with us- "literally.

The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.

The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. Im caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.

The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it's all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.

The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.

The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness.

The great thing about Coulson is that he's a little bit like a party game, where the next person who gets ahold of him gets to write another sentence. I'm constantly learning more and more about the guy.

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.

The great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. We all screw up, but the women I write about don't have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

The great thing about writing is that...you can do all these antisocial things and you get paid for them and nobody ever arrests you because they're all make-believe. Then that way if you were actually ever driven to do any of those things, the pressure's off because you'd have already written them down. It's therapy.

The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.

The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.

The great thing about writing for a younger audience is that they will give it to you straight with their responses. They'll tell you exactly what they liked and didn't like, and when they're enthusiastic, they're unashamedly enthusiastic. They'll talk to you about your characters as if they were real people, which is wonderful.

The great thing about string quartets is the players are kind of like family. They work really well as a unit, so you can write things that let them use those talents of association and intuition-all the things they’ve developed together as a group.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is.

The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

The Greek word pseudepigrapha is a Greek word meaning 'falsely superscribed,' or what we moderns might call writing under a pen name. The classification, 'OT Pseudepigrapha,' is a label that scholars have given to these writings.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo.

The guitar is my favorite and the one, I guess, I'm best at. But I play enough of the different instruments to be able to write with them and to, hopefully, to make myself look impressive on stage.

The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject.