Writing Fiction Quotes - Page 2

• Easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Powerful, Reading, Writing

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• When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

  Enrique Jardiel Poncela

  Writing, Effort, Gone

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• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

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• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Writing, Procrastination

  Statement on April 14, 1775. "Life of Samuel Johnson". Book by James Boswell. Volume II, 1791.

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• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

  Harlan Ellison

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

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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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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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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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• 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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• There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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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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• Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Inspiration, Mean, Writing

  "Trading Stories" by Jhumpa Lahiri, www.newyorker.com. June 13&20, 2011.

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  Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Night, Journey

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• You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.

  John Waters

  Motivational, Stupid, Book

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• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Creativity, People

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• Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.

  Denison Witmer

  Writing, Space, Understanding

  Source: sojo.net

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• I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

  Andre Dubus

  War, Writing, Men

  Andre Dubus (2010). “Broken Vessels: Essays”, p.67, Open Road Media

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• Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Writing, Effort, Quality

  "Old Home Town". Book by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter 1, 1935.

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• Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

  Charles Stross

  Reading, Writing, Style

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

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• Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction.

  Alice Sebold

  Writing, Voice, Different

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Characters more or less present themselves to me. I don't know their origins. I think if I did, if I seemed to myself to fabricate them, I could not induce suspension of disbelief in myself in the way writing fiction requires.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Marilynne Robinson: A Good Inheritance". Interview with Michele Filgate, www.barnesandnoble.com. October 21, 2014.

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• Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

  Buddy Ebsen

  Writing, Long, Fiction

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

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• I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.

  Helen Fielding

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "Dumped Bridget, wrote spy novel". Interview with John Walsh, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2003.

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• Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

  Jennifer Haigh

  Reading, Writing, Practice

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