Fiction Writers Quotes - Page 2

• In a good play, everyone is in the right.

  Christian Friedrich Hebbel

  Writing, Play, Fiction Writing

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• The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.

  James Gunn

  Writing, Unique, Inheritance

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• The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

  James Frey

  Writing, Conflict, Dramatic

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• Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Intelligent, Praise

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• The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John Y. Campbell

  Home, Writing, Simple

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• If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Writing, Bangs, Ends

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• I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Writing, Thinking, Voice

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• If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Writing, Technology, Fiction

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.169, Grove Press

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• Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

  Nancy Kress

  Writing, Fiction, Stuff

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• I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Funny Life, Writing, Sound

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• Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

  Harlan Ellison

  Book, Writing, World

  "Quit Your Day Job!: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer". Book by Jim Denney and James D. Denney, 2003.

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• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Schizophrenia, Form

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

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• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Nature, Rain, Writing

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• Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Editors, Rejection

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

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• You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

  Ray Bradbury

  Inspirational, Writing, Reality

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• The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Visible, Universe

  Gustave Flaubert (2009). “Madame Bovary”, p.16, Hackett Publishing

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  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

  Lillian Hellman

  Inspirational, Writing, Talking

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• Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

  Stephen King

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Writing, Trying, Tasks

  The Nigger of the Narcissus preface (1897)

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• Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

  Winston Churchill

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  Winston Churchill (1965). “Winston Churchill, His Wit and Wisdom: Selections from His Works and Speeches”

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• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

  Woody Allen

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  "Shakespeare, Woody Allen And A Certain Qantas A380" by Christine Negroni, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 23, 2012.

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Swings, Emotion

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

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• The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

  Agatha Christie

  Time, Book, Memorable

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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