Writing A Book Quotes - Page 3

• There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do.

  Michelle Tea

  Book, Writing, Differences

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• The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

  Randy Pausch

  Strong, Book, Writing

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• Who is writing these screenwriting books? Not actually writing for the studios in Hollywood. These are people that have one or a half of a credit on maybe one movie, or none. So they're all theoretical.

  Thomas Lennon

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: www.gq.com

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• It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

  Book, Writing, Men

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1898). “The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C.L. Dodgson)”

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• Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

  Mindy Kaling

  Book, Writing, Skills

  "Interview: Mindy Kaling Talks Sex In Sweet Valley (And Other Concerns)". Interview with Sara Benincasa, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 21, 2011.

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• If thou need money, get it in an honest way by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Book, Writing, Needs

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love.

  Annie Dillard

  Baby, Children, Book

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• I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.

  Ayana Mathis

  Stupid, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.

  Judy Blume

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Young at Heart: Judy Blume". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 13, 2004.

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• The thing that I'm most passionate about, I'm writing a book called 'Jab Jab Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,' and it really focuses on how to story-tell in a noisy, ADD world.

  Gary Vaynerchuk

  Book, Writing, Add

  "Gary Vaynerchuk On Social Media Trends, Time Management, Online & Real-Life Balance (Q&A)". Interview with Craig Kanalley, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 30, 2013.

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• I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

  Shirley Knight

  Book, Writing, Shows

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• A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Past

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it.

  Anthony Storr

  Book, Writing, Way

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• A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

  Philip Roth

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  Philip Roth, Ross Miller (2008). “Novels & other narratives, 1986-1991”

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• Hands down, the hardest part for me is coming up with an idea. I spend about 14 months writing a book, and that's a lot of hours spent thinking about a single project. I simply have to love the idea. I'll go through dozens of workable ideas until I find the one that lights my fire.

  Kristin Hannah

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• I think writing a book with film in mind is a way to write a really bad books. You can usually tell those books that are packaged to become films.

  Charlize Theron

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

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• Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.

  Ben H. Winters

  Falling In Love, Book, Writing

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• Fame, money and the size of the market are not very important to me. What is, is writing a book that is worth doing and then publishing it. I don't write books for entertainment, for people to pass the time then throw away.

  Aidan Chambers

  Book, Writing, People

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• And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

  Bernard Cornwell

  Team, Book, Writing

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I found, through the process of doing 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower,' that I really love directing movies and I love writing books and so this will become the centerpiece of my career for the next ten or twenty years. Doing these adaptations.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Book, Writing, Years

  "Stephen Chbosky talks “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, Blu-ray extras, and his favorite teen films". Interview with Scott Neumyer, www.ifc.com. February 13, 2012.

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• I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Book, Writing, Joy

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1980). “The Great Crash 1929”

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• For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Alberto Manguel (2006). “With Borges”, Telegram Books

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• I didn't originally intend on writing a book. I started writing during the day to feel like I was accomplishing something creative.

  Rachel Dratch

  Book, Writing, Creative

  "Rachel Dratch Is An Upper". Interview with Lianne Stokes, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 28, 2012.

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• Every writer dreams of writing a book that will touch people.

  Bruce Feiler

  Dream, Book, Writing

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