Writing
Quotes - Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted
“The
only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never
be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date.
Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging
like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must
see your left hand erasing it.”
―
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“The
person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”
―
Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays
“Anger
... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of
think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think
it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all
of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't
provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."
[Interview
with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]”
―
Toni Morrison
“Write
with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
―
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Writing
is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
―
Franz Kafka
“Poetry
is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the
ash.”
―
Leonard Cohen
“Cynics
are simply thwarted romantics.”
―
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“You
do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does
not resurrect.”
―
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“A
book is a suicide postponed.”
―
Cioran
“The
most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will
do.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A
good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good
poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the
universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around
him.”
―
Dylan Thomas
“Your
intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
―
Ray Bradbury
“No
one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a
vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by
demons.”
―
Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
“So
long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether
it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
―
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“Perhaps
I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when
they scrawl their names in the snow.”
―
Margaret Atwood
“Make
it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a
joke.”
―
Joss Whedon
“Writing
is a way of talking without being interrupted.”
―
Jules Renard
“All
that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the
world.”
―
E.B. White
“Writing
and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand
our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads
with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh
about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at
dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead
of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during
a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can
change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
―
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“A
small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic
Hercules.”
―
Anthony Trollope
“It
has often been said
there’s
so much to be read,
you
never can cram
all
those words in your head.
So
the writer who breeds
more
words than he needs
is
making a chore
for
the reader who reads.
That's
why my belief is
the
briefer the brief is,
the
greater the sigh
of
the reader's relief is.
And
that's why your books
have
such power and strength.
You
publish with shorth!
(Shorth
is better than length.)”
―
Dr. Seuss
“I
think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The
architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They
know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're
going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's
going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they
even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and
water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy
seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it,
they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it
grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
―
George R.R. Martin
