Writing Quotes - Page 17

Write because you love to write.

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue!

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words...

It was as if I were an oyster and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell -- a grain of sand that I didn't know was there and didn't particularly welcome. Then a pearl started forming around the grain and it irritated me, made me angry, tortured me sometimes. But the oyster can't help becoming obsessed with the pearl.

Patience! It is not how quickly you run, but how slowly.

Manuscript rejections might tempt you to quit writing or querying. Don't.

murder your darlings

You can't write a poem until you live.

I came home from work one day and felt compelled to write a book about free will.

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it sho

I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience.

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

Deal with your readers that theyare smart, and write a language thatsuits their intelligence.- How to write the best story-

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

If all that one sees is a tiny speck of perspective in the larger scheme of things. And each perspective is made alive by the amalgamation of learning. And learning is a mere accumulation of skill and knowledge : both deriving from Truth. And Truth is not absolute but more of a figment of one's imagination made apparent to the senses. Then all, or for the most part, is fiction.

The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright [Sophocles] says, it 'brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.' Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion....I, having realized the effects wrought by Time, desire now by means of my writings to give an account of my father's deeds, which do not deserve to be consigned to Forgetfulness nor to be swept away on the flood of Time into an ocean of Non-Remembrance; I wish to recall everything....

For what was it about books that once finished left the reader in a bit of a haze and made them reread the last few sentences in order to continue the ringing in their hearts a while longer, so as not to let the silence illumine the fact that reading, they had gained something — distance, a lesson, a companion, a new world — but now, after the last full stop, they had lost something palpable and felt a little emptier than before.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

And people turn to internet with the hope that in this virtual world, where real identity need not be disclosed, they will find someone before whom they could be their true self,without any pretensions and get an opportunity to release the pent-up emotions and feel light.

Memang sulit menulis puisi. Dan untuk apa mempersulit diri sendiri.

Write until it becomes as natural as breathing, write until not writing makes you anxious.

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

...what makes a story unique is not necessarily the information in the story but what the writer chooses to put in or leave out.(pg. 146-147)

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity...edit one more time!

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.

Master the art of selfloveand you will never have to seekvalidationever again.

Writing is like baking cupcakes, you're trying to make something from the raw. Like with cupcakes it's flour and eggs and stuff, and with books it's ideas and words. The end result is the same though, you want people to eat them up.

One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing intoa habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession.Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic,physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.

If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

Finding your passion is the key to your success. - Tracy Kauffman

The greatest thing about writing is that you get to shape more than one life.

You are alone. But you seems not afraid- though you weary with your groaning; wandering far off in the wilderness and your eyes, consumed because of your grief; waxed old while you're still young.

Words have weight.

Writing heals my heart like no pill ever could.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

Let your heart dance with pen and paperNow fill the paper with dancing letters.

As concerning the things whereof thou asked me, I will tell thee; for the evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come.

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

Ms Rainn, you might say, is a writing prodigy and I'm her mentor.

As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.

(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.

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

...each part of a story, each word if possible, was to work frontally as well as laterally... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")

Imagination is what you do with your inspiration.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

Everything in life is a story just waiting to be written.

The Sodomy sea shall cast out fish, and make a noise in the night, which many have not known: but they shall all hear the voice thereof.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, “Let’s be dragons,” and then they’re dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind—the game played for the game’s sake. On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously.

Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them. Poets do not write as if they are jotting down a sermon, they see everything in their subconscious before presenting it to the conscious, which they later turn to  readable materials. Artist do not draw and paint without painting in dream states, trance, or see an art form that others do not see. Being creative does not calls for being any supernatural entity, but in creating with the entities inside of you.