Good Writing Quotes - Page 8

• Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Writing, Enemy

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• The secret of good writing is telling the truth.

  Gordon Lish

  Writing, Secret, Telling The Truth

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• I want to keep doing different things. I'd like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it's about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that's what's important

  Tony Goldwyn

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler!

  Sophie Thompson

  Writing, Play, People

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• Left to it's own devices, writing is like weather. It has a drama, a form, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche. There is something very right about simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that is to begin, to begin where you are.

  Julia Cameron

  Drama, Rain, Writing

  Julia Cameron (1999). “The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life”, p.15, Penguin

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• Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

  Horace

  Writing, Parent, Literature

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• All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Writing, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.171, Courier Corporation

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• You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Thinking, Order

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• Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.

  Iris Murdoch

  Moving, Writing, Novelty

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch”, p.134, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.

  Sue Grafton

  Pain, Hard Work, Writing

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• Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Way, Enough

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• Good writing comes from good talent.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Writing, Talent

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1959). “Philosophical diary”

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• Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

  Meg Wolitzer

  Writing

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• Love is the main generator of all good writing... Love, passion, compassion, are all welded together.

  Carson McCullers

  Passion, Writing, Love Is

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.281, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every actor just wants good writing.

  Jeff Daniels

  Writing, Actors, Want

  "Jeff Daniels, star of The Newsroom, on walking, talking, and not getting typecast". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2012.

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• Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

  Jeff Daniels

  Writing, Play, Giving

  "Jeff Daniels, star of The Newsroom, on walking, talking, and not getting typecast". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2012.

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• There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing.

  Mindy Kaling

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, May, Attributes

  Northrop Frye (1996). “Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963”

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• All I want is a modest place in Mr X's Good Reading, Miss Y's Good Writing, and that new edition of One Thousand Best Bits of Recent Prose.

  James Agate

  Reading, Writing, Missing

  James Agate (1942). “Ego 5: Again More of the Autobiography of James Agate”

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• Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.

  Edward Abbey

  Beautiful, Writing, Silence

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

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• Good writing is rewriting.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Rewriting

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• Avoid theatrical flourishes - the phrases that sound so damned good that they stand up and beg to be recognized as "good writing," and therefore must be struck from the text.

  Donald Spoto

  Writing, Sound, Phrases

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• The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Writing, Differences, Numbers

  James J. Kilpatrick (2010). “The Writer's Art”, p.33, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.

  William Carlos Williams

  Art, Lying, Writing

  William Carlos Williams (1920). “Kora in Hell: Improvisations”

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• Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Writing, Learning, Mean

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