Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

...he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins.

He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

He was angry with himself for having kissed her and enjoyed it, only to be disappointed by her in the end. He knew that love was never simple, but it was even less so for a vampire. He shook his head in disbelief as he walked away. He had really thought that she was the one for him and had genuinely believed that he was going to spend the rest of his life with her, but now, he knew better.

He wanted to say: how could you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best thing you could do with the peasents was to leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting for those who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open.

He was always being told that writers never become famous or rich, but of course that was not why he wrote, he wrote simply because he felt he had interesting stories to tell that people might like to hear.

He was impressed with his father's fiction and noticed certain stylistic tics that he shared, and figured it was genetic. Why would genes determine only physical traits, eye color and left-handedness? Why not other, more subtle, bodiless proclivities such as a love of the semicolon and a propensity to string modifying clauses ad infinitum?

He wasn't, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us-- except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all. But there was no point in being angry with him.

He who sacrifices his respect for love basically burns his body to obtain the light.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

He who writes is the martyr, seen through the eyes of the unassuming doll.

He would write and write. He would make wonderful things happen. Some of it would be true. All of it would be true. Most of it would be true.

He wrote very well in those days, as it happens, much better than he does now. He had absolute convictions, and style is nothing more than the absolute conviction of possessing a style.

Hidden in every limitation lies an opportunity. And for every obstacle you face, there is a simple and perfect solution, creatively. And your work is to find it. Where it gets tough is you need to fucking find it in five minutes.

He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.

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His deep voice drifted to her through the crowd of women. “…my lady when she returns. Och, there ye are, Blossom,” Faolán grinned, standing up and taking her hand so she could ease back into the restaurant booth. “These lasses were just asking if I was a stripper. I told them I doona think so,” he said, his face clouded with uncertainty. “I’m not, am I?” The inquisitive lasses in question flushed scarlet and scattered to the four corners of the room at the murderous look on Colleen’s face. “No, you’re not, but I guess I can see how they’d think that,” she muttered darkly. “What you are is a freaking estrogen magnet.

His notes to the outside world offered a window on an active, sympathetic, eclectic mind.

His importance to the century just past, and therefore his status as a figure in history as well as in literature, derives from the extraordinary salience of the subjects he ‘took on,’ and stayed with, and never abandoned. As a consequence, we commonly use the term ‘Orwellian’ in one of two ways. To describe a state of affairs as ‘Orwellian’ is to imply crushing tyranny and fear and conformism. To describe a piece of writing as ‘Orwellian’ is to recognize that human resistance to these terrors is unquenchable. Not bad for one short lifetime.

His mind had patterns, patterns that made puzzles, and puzzles that became mazes. Those mazes had color and became labyrinths— labyrinths that went crazy like jungles— and all he could trust me with was letting my fingers get lost in his curls. I played in there, for years trapped in his hair (that overthought and provoked lair)— the only thing between my thoughts and his: the air. But, he was smart not to trust me enough. He knew. The open air looked at him with slight eyes, issued him binds of lies, like library cards ...full of fiction. And I knew this, so how could I forget? Along the way, I turned into every other female he ever loved. It was his destiny that gave me permission to pull his hair again.

His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!

His indirect way of approaching a character or an action, striving to realize it by surrounding rather than invading it, is ideally suited to the indefinite and suggestive presentation of a ghost story. (introduction to "Sir Edmund Orme" by Henry James)

His line was the jocundly-sentimental Wardour Street brand of adventure, told in a style that exactly met, but never exceeded, every expectation.

His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings.

His style as a writer places him in the category of the immortals, and his courage as a critic outlives the bitter battles in which he engaged. As a result, we use the word 'Orwellian' in two senses: The first describes a nightmare state, a dystopia of untrammelled power; the second describes the human qualities that are always ranged in resistance to such regimes, and that may be more potent and durable than we sometimes dare to think.

Historical gap is created due to missing written records.

History is indeed more than the register of crime,folilies and misfortune of mankind.

Hoe krijg je intimiteit in taal? Hoe wordt de roman die ook een film is toch weer een roman met alle typisch romanachtige kanten ervan? En hoe krijg je léven in die roman? Er moet een relatie zijn tussen taal en het andere; de wereld van vlees en bloed daarbuiten. Die laatste kant had ik misschien te weinig ontwikkeld. Ik word tegenwoordig soms zo overvallen door de gekste emoties, of liever gezegd: door verlangen naar die emoties.

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...

Hitler wanted not only to eradicate the Jews; he wanted also to destroy Poland and the Soviet Union as states, exterminate their ruling classes, and kill tens of millions of Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles).

History is the roadmap to a better tomorrow. Destroying it is getting rid of any chance of what not to do for future generations.

History makes my mouth water - and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.

Hold on, and dont put us on hold

Hold on to your heart and life will give you wings.

Honesty is easier when you have no face and no real name. And honesty, for me, is very easy on paper.

Home. The word circled comfortably in my mouth like bubble gum, swished around sweetly soft and satisfying. Home. Try saying it aloud to yourself. Home. Isn’t it like taking a bite of something lovely? If only we could eat words.

Honey, I write The dirty Way I’m not afraid Of going Into the darkest Corners Of the Word

Hook your editor with a strong opening sentence to bring attention to your writing.

Hotness is not a redeemable character trait. It's actually not a character trait at all.

Horror demands answers to the deeper questions; it requires the contemplation of life and death and the examination of good and evil. I know of no other fictional genre that puts morality as front and center as horror does.

How can I make a stranger see her as she stopped in the hall at the foot of the stairs and turned to us? I have never been able to describe even my fictitious characters except by their actions. It has always seemed to me that in a novel the reader should be allowed to imagine a character in any way he chooses: I do not want to supply him with ready-made illustrations. Now I am betrayed by my own technique, for I do not want any other woman substituted for Sarah, I want the reader to see the one broad forehead and bold mouth, the conformation of the skull, but all I can convey is an indeterminate figure turning in the dripping mackintosh, saying, 'Yes, Henry?' and then 'You?

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values? The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes". And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing. -Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency

How could I fall asleep, when I love the pleasure of reading and writing at night?

How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?" "You'll have to test me out." "You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it." "Rain," I say. "That's not your real name." "Does it matter?" "Well, it makes me wonder what else isn't real." "That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living." "And?" "And"-- she shrugs--"I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that.

How do we as artists question our sins in front of a greater audience? How do we as Jews show ourselves as flawed and complex human beings?

How do you feel when you read stuff written by dead authors? A visit by a ghost?

However much or little I had written, on a subsequent reading it always seemed so fundamentally flawed that I had to destroy it immediately and begin again.

How do you paint a writer's block? Just fill it with fifty shades of black.

However one must ask not just, is it amusing, is it exciting, but is it a work of art?

How many nights does it take to stop these wounds from bleeding?