Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

When people find out you're a writer of any kind, they often think one of two things: that you're filthy rich ... or that you're dirt poor - neither of which are necessarily true.

When people ask what I would tell my younger self, the budding writer at the beginning of her career, it is always the same: I wish I could have prepared myself for what happens to a writer when she is brutally honest, when she speaks truth to power in a raw and emotional way. The literary establishment continues to privilege work that’s just a touch removed, “refined” they would call it. Writers who tone down their anguish, their rage, their nontraditional, “deviant choices are perceived as more skilled, more worthy of critical acclaim. This often has a lot to do with racism and sexism, and the stories we are “allowed” to tell as people of color. The classification is not a new phenomenon nor is the marginalization of powerful autobiographical stories that demand engagement. I wish I had known all this, not because I would have done things differently, but because I would not have been so surprised by some of the dismissive responses to my work. I would have been more prepared.

When people say, 'you're so young to be a writer,' I always reply, 'I started young because I've got a lot to write.

When people see things that are strange & creative & they're like "the creator must have been on drugs!" it's like "no. you are just boring

When people talk about poetry as a project, they suggest that the road through a poem is a single line. When really the road through a poem is a series of lines, like a constellation, all interconnected. Poems take place in the realm of chance, where the self and the universal combine, where life exist. I can’t suggest to you that going through a line that is more like a constellation than a road is easy—or that the blurring of the self and the universal doesn’t shred a poet a little bit in the process. The terrain of a poem is unmapped (including the shapes of the trees along the constellation-road). A great poet knows never to expect sun or rain or cold or wind in the process of creating a poem. In a great poem all can come to the fore at once. It would be worse yet, if none are there at all.

When people really are writers, they write. Artists draw. Golfers golf. Fish swim. Can’t keep them from it; it’s who they are. They may dream of the big time, but in the meantime, they’ll draw or write on napkins if they have to, and every hallway is a fairway. Or a green. Dave Brisbin

When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.

When she sat down to write, she didn't have to wade back into the story slowly, waiting to get used to the temperature.

When she was chair of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010, Daisy Goodwin wrote a controversial essay lamenting the 'unrelenting grimness' of so many novels and pointing out that 'generally great fiction contains light and shade'---not only misery but joy and humor. 'It is time for publishers to stop treating literary fiction as the novelistic equivalent of cod-liver oil: if it's nasty it must be good for you.

When someone steals your original ideas? Feel sorry for them. When someone steals your thunder or applause? Feel sorry for them. When someone doesn't support your dreams or work ? Feel sorry for them. But when someone steals your truth, your voice, your heart or your words? Feel truly sorry for them And then kick their ass. It's yours. Because you've been way too fucking polite.

When she was doing other things—schoolwork, chores, exercising—Madi had to work to keep herself interested. Writing was the opposite. Finishing a blog always left her more ‘full’ than empty.

When sitting down to write a letter, it always pays to calm one’s mood, collect one’s thoughts, and have a plan.

When someone gives you advice, just ask them to give it in writing and they will either keep mum or will run from there.

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly — with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow. In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear the way you want to be heard.

When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.

When telling a story, I feel like it is important to try to crack the surface of our insular American experience in as many places as possible, then pour my characters into those seams like an epoxy.

When that little clock on my wall says “Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It’s half past time to write”, I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.

When the imagination takes over, the second hand could be the hour hand to a creator of stories.

When the ink runs dry, you're most likely writing at the wrong angle.

When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?

When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people.

When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend’s sisters, I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was not alone.

When The Pyramid falls, the other cities will follow in short order. Nature's balance will be restored and Man will finally return to solitude.

...when there's no plot line there are no digressions.

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.

When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.

When they show you who they are — you know what to do already.

When tongues lack bravery and hearts protect their own, eyes always tell the truth.

When Tito was born, I was writing my fifth novel. That was how I saw my future: living in Venice and jumping from novel to novel. Tito's birth changed all that.

When was it that they who dwell upon the earth have not sinned in thy sight? or what people have so kept thy commandments? Thou shall find that you all by name had kept thy precepts; but not the heathen.

When troubled, we need to burrow down in a comfy spot, find the form of words that works best, and write.

When wealth goes only happiness goes, when health goes even the hope goes.

When we forget ourselves, when we let go of being good and just settle into just being a writer, we begin to have the experience of writing through us. We retire as the self-conscious author and become something else - the vehicle for self-expression. When we are just the vehicle, the storyteller and not the point of the story, we often write very well - we certainly write more easily.

When we hear our souls speak, we are free.

When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live.

When we think, we hurt. When we feel, we heal.

When we’ve decided to tell the truth in a story, we should tell good, strong versions of it, proper versions that kids can do something with.

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

When words failed I realized there was something unspeakably beautiful in not being able to put words to your happiness.

When writing feels like jumping a cliff, grab the nearest pen!

When writing, I always find that you should write through an obstacle instead of editing it out.

When you begin to losing your audience, do not get loud; get quiet, make them find you and come back to you.

When you are composing a verse, let there not be a hair's breadth separating your mind from what you write. Quickly say what is in your mind; never hesitate a moment.

When you are a free and independent writer, without employer, without hours or deadlines, you have to play little games to force yourself into the actual writing. For me, one game is to announce...that I have finally decided on my next book, that I am ready to write it...to put my pride on the line.

When you do away with God you become your own god, because you recognise no greater power in the universe than yourself.

When you fail, get hurt, feel bad, but act on it! Everybody fails, but the ones who act are the ones who change the world!

When you fall in love for the last time, it becomes the first.

When you feel that creeping self-doubt, acknowledge it. Write down your feelings in your journal in your journal... and then continue with your writing.

When you don't have the pressure of pleasing someone else and do something because you love doing it, that's when the best works are born.