Creative Writing Quotes - Page 3

• The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  Stephen King

  Movie, Writing, Sisterhood

  FaceBook post by Stephen King from Feb 06, 2013

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• Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Writing, Creativity

  "Rachel Cusk: in praise of the creative writing course" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2013.

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• When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Character, Glasses

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them.

  Hart Crane

  Written Language, Power Of Language, Written Word

  Brom Weber, Hart Crane (1970). “Hart Crane: a biographical and critical study”

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• I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving Up, Hard Work, Writing

  "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles". Interview with Herbert Mitgang, archive.nytimes.com. April 22, 1984.

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• Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.

  James Fenton

  Writing, Iowa, Creative

  "Where poetry and music divide" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2002.

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• Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, People, Creative

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• Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Book, Writing, People

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• I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Father, Home, Writing

  "American Dreamer". www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

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• When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

  David Guterson

  Writing, College, Class

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• I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Past, Thinking

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• And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.

  Bob Schieffer

  Writing, Years, Two

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• The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Writing, Oddities, Ideas

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• I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Thinking, Creative

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• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

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• Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Work, Inspiration

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• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

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• Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Character, Water, Modern Life

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations”, p.49, Melville House

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• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

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• The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

  Milan Kundera

  Writing, Ambition, Creative

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• The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'

  Tom Robbins

  Writing, Heart, Creating

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• On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

  Annie Dillard

  Writing, Three, Four

  Annie Dillard (2009). “The Writing Life”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Wisdom, Witty

  Oscar Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Gray - and more”, Eighty Pence Books

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• All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

  Francine Prose

  Writing, Skills, Creative

  Francine Prose (2009). “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose.

  Laurie Alberts

  Writing, Two, Creative

  Laurie Alberts (2010). “Showing & Telling: Learn How to Show & When to Tell for Powerful & Balanced Writing”, p.1, F+W Media, Inc.

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