Great Writing Quotes - Page 3

• When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

  Margaret Laurence

  Mean Girls, Jobs, Writing

  58 Copy quote

• I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

  Harper Lee

  Inspirational, Wise, Writing

  9 Copy quote

• Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.

  Larry L. King

  Writing, Blogging, Shortcuts

  47 Copy quote

• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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• To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Writing, Voice, Design

  98 Copy quote

• Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

  Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Writing, Pieces, Crafts

  On the Art of Writing "On Style" (1916)

  49 Copy quote

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Excuse

  14 Copy quote

• Don't look back until you've written an entire draft.

  Will Self

  Looks, Written

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

  Steve Almond

  Lying, Reading, Writing

  63 Copy quote

• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Whole

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

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• Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

  John Updike

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  46 Copy quote

• What no wife of a writer can ever understand...is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.

  Burton Rascoe

  Writing, Wife, Window

  "Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes, Mostly Humorous" by Bennett Cerf, (p. 118), 1948.

  65 Copy quote

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• Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

  Enid Bagnold

  Flower, Writing, Oddities

  275 Copy quote

• It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

  Jack Kerouac

  Writing, Way, Inspiration To Write

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.

  John Updike

  Kings, Hero, Writing

  13 Copy quote

• When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

  Stephen King

  Hurt, Children, Writing

  10 Copy quote

• Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

  John Steinbeck

  Writers And Writing, Whole, Writing By Writers

  8 Copy quote

• I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

  Roald Dahl

  Hate, Book, Reading

  10 Copy quote

• Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate, Obsession, Intense

  Franz Kafka (1995). “The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories”, Random House LLC

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• Just write every day of your life. Read intensely.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Writers Block, Writer's Block

  8 Copy quote

• Write while the heat is in you.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Heat, Writing By Writers

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

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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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• Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

  Sholem Asch

  Writing, Ifs, Creative Writing

  26 Copy quote

• The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

  Jules Renard

  Fashion, Writing, Air

  Jules Renard, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Roget (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.79, Tin House Books

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• I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

  Peter De Vries

  Work, Writing, Written Word

  86 Copy quote