Writing Quotes - If I do not write to empty my mind, I
go mad
“She was a beautiful dreamer. The kind of girl, who
kept her head in the clouds, loved above the stars and left regret beneath the
earth she walked on.”
― robert m drake
“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human
has something to express.”
― Brenda Ueland
“I write almost always in the third person, and I don't
think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old,
and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced,
all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.”
― Philip Pullman
“There is creative reading as well as creative
writing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”
― Charles Bukowski
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit
will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and
polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”
― Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories
“Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to
go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the
afternoon.”
― Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty
“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are
not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds
through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant
people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among
us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force
their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and
libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”
― Isaac Asimov, Roving Mind
“Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding
on to one long enough to get it written down. ”
― Lynn Abbey
“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across
tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”
― Alexander Trocchi
“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson
“If you have any
young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can
do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first
greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
― Dorothy Parker
“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying
"wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big
gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying
"wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature
“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and
sit down and write!”
― Jackie Collins
“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to
build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your
imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these
castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us
believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost
anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another
part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what
separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if
we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I
think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more
than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less
compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life
starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay
isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as
possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more
importantly, it has its permanent advantages.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' -
that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”
― Franz Kafka
“If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.”
― George Gordon Byron
“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment
against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I
make an occasional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying,
darling.
You will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds
happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.
The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium,
Xanax.”
The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poems.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase
