Writing
Quotes - One should use common words to say uncommon things
“Kill
your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little
scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
―
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“I
have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it
shorter."
(Letter
16, 1657)”
―
Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters
“My
task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to
make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
―
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
“In
the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all
that will go before it.”
―
Rose Tremain
“Better
to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have
no self."
[The
New Statesman, February 25, 1933]”
―
Cyril Connolly
“When
writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House
burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it
was a pretty good day.”
―
Neil Gaiman
“A
person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it”
―
Roald Dahl
“Cram
your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never
stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other
people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your
nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell
them to pipe down and leave you alone.”
―
Jennifer Weiner
“We
live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of
kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance
and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin
“Who
is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in
perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
―
Kurt Vonnegut
“One
should use common words to say uncommon things”
―
Arthur Schopenhauer
“A
writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever
happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a
purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us,
including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given
to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
―
Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto
Alifano 1981-1983
“You
can fix anything but a blank page.”
―
Nora Roberts
“The
first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but
not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your
culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To
write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.”
―
Chuck Palahniuk
“A
story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things
that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”
―
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“Anybody
who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him
the rest of his days.”
―
Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“It's
okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That
doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give
you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because
you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you
read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond
what is comfortable.”
―
Ashly Lorenzana
“The
pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being
there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible”
―
Vladimir Nabokov
“When
I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut
“The
hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”
―
Ernest Hemingway
“Living
with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most
imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”
―
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“The
ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my
burden. And even I grow tired.”
―
Harlan Ellison, Stalking the Nightmare
