Writing Quotes - Page 25

Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery....I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.

Don't be jealous, be agressive. Make 2012 yours!

The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.

To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful.

Ah, I do so love this charmingly rustic, elvin kingdom!-Baozhai

Stories do not change, only the lives they live in do.

The life of a writer is tragic: the more we advance the farther there is to go and the more there is to say the less time there is to say it.

Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in prestigiouslaw firms, or opening their own mortuaries, the writer may bestill sweating out his first novel.

Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?

I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.

Sesungguhnya, penulis yang bersemangat jauh lebih menjanjikan daripada penulis yang berbakat.

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

Never underestimate the power of the written word, especially when you put them down in your own voice.

Truthfully, there're only a handful of people in this world who really get joy from seeing you happy. Most won't care if you’re happy, only if you're miserable like they are. They eat that shit up.

My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

And as their penile pain began to subside, the two men were able to form more complex thoughts, resulting in a collaborative work: the development of a worldview that might be described as “penilosophy.

Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

All Authors come from the unified countrynent known as Australia. Authors live in the future where love is external.

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed-- yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings--flaws and all.

You never know what you can do until you try, and oh the things you discover on the other side of that curtain. The treasures that await are beyond any simple measure. Just put one foot in front of the other, close your eyes, and pull the cloth back. Once you do, you will be amazed!

Writing is a lifelong disease. Once contracted, the only prescription is to write constantly in whatever form to express your condition, in whatever construction to carry your words beyond you.

I had a dream about you last night. I was writing a ‘Sex for dummies-Christians That Secretly What to be Porn Stars- 1st edition.’ And you helped me with the illustrations.

We make a home for ourselves, every time we work on something: actors, writers, singers, building these little nests in our gypsy souls, in place of the ones we so seldom seem to make in our own lives. And then suddenly it's over, and we have to start again.

Positive thoughts shape a positive world.

Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination There are simply many cases of it over the mainstream and that even reached the big screen.

You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, 'This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone!

As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

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.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

I like to make blank pages darker. It's this thing I do.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.

I know one thing for sho Heaven’s gotta have a ghettoCuz where else in death do I get to go?

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, or making friends. It's about doing what you love the best you know how. It's about making a heart pound in fear, shrink from rage, weep with understanding, or soar with excitement. It's about making worlds and living in them deeply enough someone else can join you there. It's about life changed to words, words changed to life, over and over and over again. It's about giving.

Writing is the emotional morphine.

Science Fiction has always attracted more talented writers than it could reward adequately.

It were better that we were not at all, than that we should live still in wickedness, and to suffer, and not to know wherefore.

Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.)

That's what novels are: They're amalgams of archetypes, collections of random traits one observes in other people through life, blended into fresh characters.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful.

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic.

You can't lose sleep over should-of's and could-of's.

It was full of wounding remarks rather brilliantly said, perhaps said for the sheer virtuosity of giving pain neatly. Each of its phrases found its way through the eyes of the Marquesa, then, carefully wrapped in understanding and forgiveness, it sank into her heart.

Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners.

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

I realized that my life of late had consisted of far too much dialogue and not enough exposition. I imagined an angry, bespectacled English teacher slashing his pen through the transcript of my life, wondering how someone could possibly say so much and think so little.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

...at some point you need to stop looking out at others and start looking inward, at yourself, at your own accomplishments, at your own foibles, at your own successes and your own failures. It's only when you begin to look inward that you can begin to have an effect on those out there, the ones with the greedy eyes and outstretched hands.

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Anger does not change the fact. The will to take control is everything.

Google maps are one thing but there's no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder - I'd been hanging around staring at the exterior of his flat for too long.

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.

By mastering character and plot, you give your book a fighting chance and withoutcharacter and plot, no book can survive.

It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.

The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

A writing day is like any other day. Except I live in my pajamas, I forget to eat, and I suddenly look up, wondering when day turned into night.

If you would be a reader read if a writer write.