Quotes Tagged "writing"

Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.

Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.

The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

Get black on white.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

How can you write if you can't cry?

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.

There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.