Good Writing Quotes - Page 9

• My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

  Dick Schaap

  Writing

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• If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

  Katherine Paterson

  Art, Believe, Book

  Katherine Paterson (1981). “Gates of excellence: on reading and writing books for children”, Dutton Juvenile

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• No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Clouds, Vagueness

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.50, Modern Library

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• Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.

  Sanaa Lathan

  Writing, Storytelling, Appeals

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• I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Good Luck, Sharks

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• The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

  Gene Fowler

  Writing, Successful, Way

  Attributed without citation in Blythe Camenson "How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book", p. 188, 2002.

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• Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Skating, Kind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1954). “Basic Selections from Emerson: Essays, Poems & Apothegms”

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• If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.

  Steven Galloway

  Writing, Would Be, Possibility

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• read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

  P. D. James

  Writing, Order, Appreciate

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.292, Faber & Faber

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• My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.

  Anne Lamott

  Gratitude, Ocean, Grateful

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.15, Anchor

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• A couple of pieces of advice for the kids who are serious about writing are: first of all, to read everything you can get your hands on so you can become familiar with different forms of writing: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism. That's very important. And also keep a journal. Not so much, because it's good writing practice. Although it is, but more because it's a wonderful source of story starters.

  Ann M. Martin

  Couple, Writing, Kids

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

  William Zinsser

  Confused, Writing, Tired

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• Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

  Dorianne Laux

  Writing, Simple, Metaphor

  Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Heart, Agony

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

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• Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Agony, Uniforms

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• There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rules by which the young writer may steer his course. He will often find himself steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

  E. B. White

  Stars, Writing, Thinking

  William Strunk, Jr., E. B. White (1972). “The Elements of Style”

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• Write about what you know and care deeply about. When one puts one's self on paper - that is what is called good writing.

  Joel Chandler Harris

  Writing, Self, Paper

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• The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

  Horace

  Writing, Secret, Sound

  Horace (1936). “Complete Works”

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• Writing, or at least good writing, is an outgrowth of that urge to use language to communicate complex ideas and experiences between people. And that's true whether you're reading Shakespeare or bad vampire fiction-reading is always an act of empathy. It's always an imagining of what it's like to be someone else.

  John Green

  Reading, Writing, Ideas

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• An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Writing, Sound, Essentials

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• There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, House, Acting

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• As an actor, you are in a unique position because you’re not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.

  Jesse Eisenberg

  Writing, Unique, Actors

  "Jesse Eisenberg On ‘Why Stop Now,’ Writing Plays & Jeremy Lin". Interview with Christopher Rosen, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 16, 2012.

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• Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Voice, Effort

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• Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

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• If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

  Gertrude Stein

  Communication, Writing, Fighting

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