Quotes Tagged "writing"

The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent. Hence the novice or still unsuccessful writer, who has enough trouble believing in himself, has the added burden of shame. It’s hard to be a good writer and a guilty person; a lack of self-respect creeps into one’s prose.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

Writing had always helped her, before. It always clarified her feelings and her thoughts, and she never felt like she could understand something fully until the very minute that she'd written about it, as if each story was one she told herself and her readers, at the same time.

At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.

The hardest things to write are often the best things to read. And the most deserving to be written.

Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.

Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets.

...no good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one...

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

I get annoyed when a self-indulgent writer just shows off what he knows but doesn't really tell a story. To me storytelling is first a craft. Then if you're lucky, it becomes an art form. But first, it's got to be a craft.. You've got to have a beginning, middle and end. And I have sort of applied the theatrical principles to writing. Throw the story in the air and see what's going to happen.

It is strange to hear my words Read back to me. I don't think I wrote them To have them ever leave the page. I think I only write What happens across my brain When my feet are too weary To dance anymore.

♔ Writing is my passion. I never want to let it go. It may be short, Fan-Fiction or purely my own work. But it is my kingdom, I am the princess. For all the noble readers in the kingdom, I bring them joy with tales. My knights that protect me, are my fellow writers. The dragon would be the inspiration for my writing. The fortune teller would be my best friend, giving me hope. The castle would be Wattpad, it keeps everything protected. ♔

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

(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.

Writing is the new reading

Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way. [Interview, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009]

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.