Writers Quotes - Page 4

It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn’t be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more confused it seems even to me, like hazy prospects seen from too far away, since everything passes, even the memory of our most scalding tears and our heartiest laughter; our eyes soon dry, our mouths resume their habitual shape; the only memory that remains to me is that of a long tedious time that lasted for several winters, spent in yawning and wishing I were dead

People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

Stories change the world.

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted."Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable...""What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh."Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity.""A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands the disease. How can you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare.

Create a world in front of your readers where they can taste, smell, touch, hear, see, and move. Else they are likely going to move on to another book.

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.

Some people are in misery of carrying the entire world’s pain on their shoulders. They are called writers.

Cherish every relationship in your life. There are certain things in life that can't be fixed if broken!

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words.

In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.

In order to be heard, an author must have readers...

There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.

The preliminaries were out of the way, the creative process was about to begin. The creative process, that mystic life force, that splurge out of which has come the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Fantasie Impromptu, the Bayeux tapestries, Romeo and Juliet, the windows of Chartres Cathedral, Paradise Lost - and a pulp murder story by Dan Moody. The process is the same in all; if the results are a little uneven, that doesn't invalidate the basic similarity of origin.

Words are my weapons. They might kill or cure the readers, that’s out of my control.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

He offered her power, money, status...a giant prison, all in exchange for only...her soul.

Cliches are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases.

Hollywood shines by virtue of light within.

Now as through this world I ramble I see lots of funny men Some rob you with a six gun Some with a fountain pen.

some words bring warmthjust bybeing next to each other.

Writing isn't only about a completed piece of work.It’s about the writer you’re becoming while creating

Writing isn't only about a completed piece of work. It's about the writer you're becoming while writing.

I thought about how all that mattered, in all entirety, and all I wanted, and all I could see anything being worth anything for, was being a writer.

Don’t let the world tell you who you are. You get up and you tell the world who you are.

I became a physicist to understand the world, then I became a writer to try and change it.

Reading sparks writing.

No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it’s a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don’t need anyone to confirm it.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Self-censorship is more efficient than any police. You write and say not what you really think, but what you believe is acceptable. By that process we lose those revolutionary ideas that could change society for the better

Most people don't have real friends. You have people in your life waiting for opportunities to see what YOU can do for them.

Listen to what speaks to your heart.

You must begin writing your life book.

When I write...I am in the fond armsof a childhood friendupon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawingsof my woes.

There is somethingmystically sadand beautifulabouthowi will neversee youagainbut meet youagain and againin poetry.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

Writing is a form of art. Do not use New Times Roman or Arial because it's boring and hackneyed.

Humility is an essential quality in writers who want to write well.

Be a burst of joy.

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.

He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!

Lighten up. Brighten up. Smile.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improve

Write only if you wish to read it again and again...

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.

My problem as a writer is that—whenever I meet someone for the first time—I immediately invent for them a personality and background that are invariably more interesting than the ones they possess. And confirming this character to be uninteresting after a few minutes of conversation, I decide that they are unnecessary to my story and begin devising ways to kill them off.

To call yourself an author takes publishing one book. To call yourself an inspirational author is the work of a lifetime that requires being constantly kicked in the stomach, only to get back up on your feet and show the world how you survived it each time.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth the publishing to find honest men to publish it and to get sensible men to read it.

. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.

Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers.

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.("Introduction")

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.His train of thought, the story's lifeline, beer-lubricated but no whit impeded, flashed and sputtered and coursed ahead like lightning in a topaz mist, and the loose fingers and hiccuping keys followed as fast as they could. ("The Penny-A-Worder")

We are writing the history of our time.

The act of reading will enrich your life.Become a lifelong learner and a reader.