Writing Quotes - Page 12

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.

Silken strings composing the harpsichord of life accommodate a score of emotional tidings. An orchestra of linked heartbeats strumming the melodious prose of our collective intones gives rise to sonnets of melancholy, producing an illimitable libretto stretching from the milky dawn of newborn’s amaranth life to the speckled sunsets of gentle souls whom we cherish.

Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled...in a unique and inimitable way.

I enjoy self-publishing & sending publishers rejection letters. They're like, 'Who is this guy?' And I'm like, 'the end of your industry.

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'

Like the 'good' characters in literature, the sane don't have any memorable lines.

I am obsessed with reading and writing.

Dementia isn’t the only place that memories are found to be flawed—people find out they can’t rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can’t use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn’t know. It was why I had to write this book.

If you want to be a successful writer you have to put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and put words on the page. Even shitty words are better than no words. You can go back and fix them later.

Your story must told.Live a life legacy- written book or notes.This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Art is too often discounted as a secondary priority. The writer is necessary to society.

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: "If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membrane and yank, hard. If it feels like you’ve just turned your brain inside out, you have. Writing is brain surgery, pure and simple.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

Arrogance kills creativity.

There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make it interesting. That is very easily said, but how do you make your writing interesting?The answer to the question is, that you write interestingly only about the things that genuinely interest you. This is an infallible rule.

Your current circumstances are part of your redemption story He is writing.

Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission.

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the I’m a Fraud phase. You go through the I’ll Never Finish phase. And every once in a while you think, What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it’s received as such?

I believe the greatest pleasure in writing is in the progressive artistry of it. Each project is an attempt to do better than before - to produce a worthy work of art - something having meaning not only for the writer but also for those who may share the experience of it later. I treasure the hope of producing something that will make a difference in the world - some kind of positive change.

You wanna be the next Tolkien? Don't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. TOLKIEN didn't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. He read books on finnish philology. You go and read outside your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. And then the most important thing, once you get any level of quality--get to the point where you wanna write, and you can write--is tell YOUR story. Don't tell a story anyone else can tell. Because you always start out with other people's voices... There will always be people who are better or smarter than you. There are people who are better writers than me, who plot better than I do, but there is no one who can tell a Neil Gaiman story like I can.

Putting a piece of you in your protagonist adds depth and merges the worlds of fiction and reality.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

I am made of words. Cut me & I bleed sentences. Read me, & I speak to your soul.

...it has been demonstrated through years of workshops that the Artist Within tends to make the same mistakes as the artist within everybody else.

Yes, writing comes easy for me and it's also a painful, arduous process. I love writing. I hate writing. I never want to write again, and I want to write all day, everyday.

Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

You may not have finished today but the work you did got you closer than if you would have done nothing.

Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.

But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do wit

The only thing you really need to be a writer is time. Regular, consistent time, quality time when you're not tired. I write on the bus to and from work, that's my time, 1 or 2 hours every single day. Make the time, keep at it, and you'll be a real writer before you know it.

What’s the use of writing poetry for your peers? I don’t think I should sell my poetry to other poets. If that’s who my audience is, I’m dead, I’m not going to make any money.

You need to take some acting classes to learn to hide your huge crush on my husband better

The ordinary stories of our ordinary lives have extraordinary gifts coded within them. . .

The moment I realize I just stayed up until five in the morning writing is that moment I know I am meant to be a writer.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

She writes things with her movements that I for the life of me could never write with a pen.

I thought I would write a love letter. But then, I wrote a book." - Suzy Davies, on "Johari's Window

There is a difference between fresh and weird. You never want to throw your reader out of the story. Keep it fresh but natural.

Writing is transcendental. It is a form of expression, a form of art that you can take anywhere. That you can do anywhere. It poses the deepest questions in the universe. It generates emotion. It elicits empathy, promotes learning, creates an intellect you simply cannot get from any other medium. For me, it is air.

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.

Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words.

The truth is there isn’t anything to me at all. All I know is that I can’t sleep well, I can’t dream well and I’m quite in love with you. That’s all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it’s not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That’s when I realise you’re dead. That’s when I remember you’ve been gone for years. That’s when I remember I’m awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever.

Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don't keep space in your head for writing, you won't write even if you have the time.

The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.

It's the witching hour once more-When the Muse comes out to play.He calls me through that magic door-Where galaxies of worlds await!

A book is a suicide postponed.

The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.

If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. And if someone asks me the inevitable next dumb question, “Why do you write the way you do?” I must answer that I wish to make my hatred acceptable because my hatred is much of me, if not the best part. Writing is a way of making the writer acceptable to the world—every cheap, dumb, nasty thought, every despicable desire, every noble sentiment, every expensive taste.

Be a worthy worker and work will come.

It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun... The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.

I have had my say, as he wished. Now the book belongs, as he points out, to the world he claims to speak for.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.