Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

You should be more careful when you move, my dear what with you... spilling moonlight into my poem, with a mere flick of your hand.

You should assume the mantle of your birthright.

You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all.

You story must be best told by you. Your experience is a sacred life.

You stole my story and something's got to be done about it.

You tend to write because your heart holds million unspoken words, writing is your only way to heal your own soul!

You, too, can observe the beauty of flowers and nature through the windows of your life if you are willing to open them.

You think writing a book is hard? Wait until you give it to someone to read.

You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have ‘talent.

You understand nothing of—the horror—no wonder you can't write real books—you don't see—the horror—

You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cleared my throat and paused and then began to read. L. She sighed and lifted her chin to the ceiling, opened her eyes and told me it was beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, and true, the best thing I'd written yet.

You've got to try and not let it keep you down. Sure, let it hurt but don't let it harm you.

You've got to be smart enough to write and stupid enough not to think about all the things that might go wrong.

You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.

You’ve got to write every day as if you were clocking in for a job. Or if not every day, then damn near it. If you’re not disciplined in your production—if you’re writing only when the mood strikes or when a deadline looms—then naturally you’ll be more protective of your work, so that when it comes time to cut, your saw will tremble with hesitation. But if you’re producing reams of pages, you’ll be less resistant to revision, because you know it won’t be long before another load of timber comes down the road.

You turn the lights on and off here and if you can’t sleep and want something to read there are books in the living room…” her voice broke off. “Wait. Can you read?” His chin took a slight tilt upward. “Aye,” Faolán replied, his voice cool, “in English, Gaelic, Latin, or French. My Welsh is a bit rusty, and I doona remember any of the Greek I was taught except for words not fit for a lady’s ears. I can also count all the way up to…” He looked down and wiggled his large bare toes, “…twenty.” – Faolán MacIntyre

You've got to have high expectations to achieve top results.

You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.

You wanted to show everyone you could write about the black heart of a killer. And all the while pretending you don't even have your own dark desires.

You want to be a writer. This is your dream. And, it’s a fantastic dream to have.

You want to get your book to press. You rush it through. Revision number twenty—done. Do you really need twenty more? Yes. A half-baked book is a half-birthed child. It aborts, is put on life support; reviewers line the hall to pull the plug.

You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones.

You were meant to write this book.

You will always end up in frustration whenever you try to produce outside your purpose.

You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre.

You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.

You will have the grace of writing, when you boldly begin to write your first sentences.

You will never learn how to write well if you don't learn how to edit.

You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does.

You will not publish 100% of the books you don’t write.

A $200 million contract just got awarded to develop software to provide the Department of Defense with all these sock puppets who have fake Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why not create ten fake Libyan Twitter users and then get one journalist to follow them. But the problem is, of course, it corrupts the entire process. One of the caveats is that anything they write is going to be in a foreign language so it won't affect Americans. But that doesn't make any sense because: A) it can be translated pretty easily, and B) Americans also speak other languages.

Aaron Sorkin uses a lot of the same people again and again - the people he likes. I think if there's ever a part for me, he would consider me for it. I hope so. Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt, other times it helps you. It's just amazing to work with his scripts. There's never any fat in them. It's all perfect, and there's such a rhythm to it. The musicality of his writing - it's so specific and unique to him, and such a joy to play as an actor, because there's no sentimentality.

"30 Rock" is over, so I definitely aspire to write another movie again; eventually, will try to pitch something for television again.

40 Words for Sorrow is brilliant-one of the finest crime novels I've ever read. Giles Blunt writes with uncommon grace, style and compassion and he plots like a demon. This book has it all-unforgettable characters, beautiful language, throat-constricting suspense.

70 percent of what we do involves staring into space trying to figure out what the hell happens next.

8th grade I started writing my own songs. They weren't good songs or anything, but it was always the song writing aspect of things that was important to me, I always just wanted to create a song it seemed like.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Aaron Sorkin wrote me one of the best female roles on television, I think. He's a wonderful writer for all people. If he chooses to write, hopefully he'll write something that involves more women next time, because I would love to do it.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.

A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.... One of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity...he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory.

Aberjhani's writing blows the mind and frees the psyche of any rigid assumptions about ancestral heritage. Here, our collective experience is starkly rendered. The transparency of one culture overlays another, and another, to form the daguerreotype of possibilities that is homo sapiens, interacting, almost like the elements themselves, with the created world and modified only by context and its imperatives.

Abe's face came back into focus. "Greetings, Zmey," I said weakly. Somehow, him being here didn't surprise me. "Nice of you to slither on in." He shook his head, wearing a rueful smile. "I think you've outdone me when it comes to sneaking around dark corners. I thought you were on your way back to Montana." "Next time, make sure you write a few more details into your bargains. Or just pack me up and send me back to the U. S. For real." "Oh," he said, "that's exactly what I intend to do." He kept smiling as he said it, but somehow, I had a feeling he wasn't joking.

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

A book is a private thing, citizen; it belongs to the one who writes it and to the one who reads it. Like the mind itself, a book is a private space. Within that space, anything is possible. The greatest evil and the greatest good.