Writing Style Quotes - Page 2

• All nonfiction writers, whether they like it or not, are translators. The translator is the perfect journalist. The best journalism endeavors to convey an essential idea or story to an audience that knows very little about it, and that requires translation. To do this successfully, the writer must filter the idea through the prism of his eye, and his mind, and his writing style.

  Ilan Stavans

  Writing, Eye, Ideas

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• I have chosen to parody the writing styles of Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield, Richard Bach, Lynn Andrews, and several other best-selling new age authors.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Style, Age

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• The songwriting style, to me, is superior. There was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

  M. Ward

  Song, Opportunity, Light

  Interview with Bob Boilen, www.npr.org. November 17, 2006.

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• George Smith shows how many of the prophet’s followers embraced plural marriage during a period when the LDS Church was emphatically denying the practice … [and he tells this in] a lucid writing style.

  Daniel Walker Howe

  Writing, Practice, Lds

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• Nightclub City tells the behind-the-scenes story of Manhattan's glamorous nightlife at its peak. Packed with colorful characters, terrific original research, and an unusually accessible writing style, Nightclub City is a gritty social history of America's most glitzy fantasies.

  Debby Applegate

  Writing, Character, Nightlife

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• It's somewhat of a contradiction, .. I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes.

  David Bergen

  Book, Mean, Writing

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• I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

  Black Francis

  People, Style, Musician

  Interview with Scott Gordon, www.avclub.com. October 19, 2006.

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• Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. In a way, if someone says this didn't feel exactly right, I don't care. But that is not okay to do in academia - it's not about feeling. You want to establish a pretty solid case. So did this allow me to express things differently? Absolutely. Another thing I've been thinking about as an academic: our writing style is expository, and in fiction, withholding information matters quite a bit. Withholding things in academia - there's no place for that!

  Elliott Colla

  Writing, Thinking, Feelings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I don't understand why America embraces Lady GaGa and Katy Perry and all of the "pop stuff" as much as they do. The Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are also included, and I don't really get any of that. Maybe that means that I am old. That stuff seems like it isn't that "authentic." Katy has a cool writing style though, and her lyrics can be poignant and mean stuff from time to time. I really appreciate that about her.

  Matt Thiessen

  Brother, Writing, Mean

  Source: mousertime.blogspot.com

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• I just have to come clean and admit I am an extremely, painfully slow writer. I have this unfortunate - or fortunate, I'm not sure which is correct - habit of editing while I'm writing which everyone tells me that I shouldn't do that. But that's just the way I write and I think it's important to stay true to your own writing style and momentum.

  Nami Mun

  Writing, Thinking, Style

  Source: chicagoist.com

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• I think I have always sort of cultivated a flowery writing style. I've always sort of over - written in every genre that I've attempted. I went to college and took a couple of writing classes and I remember my teachers were always incredibly encouraging. But it was inevitable to get the criticism: "Take it down a notch!" But the nice thing about screenwriting is that you don't really have to.

  Diablo Cody

  Teacher, Couple, Nice

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• There is something false in this search for a purely feminine writing style. Language, such as it is, is inherited from a masculine society, and it contains many male prejudices. We must rid language of all that. Still, a language is not something created artificially; the proletariat can't use a different language from the bourgeoisie, even if they use it differently, even if from time to time they invent something, technical words or even a kind of worker's slang, which can be very beautiful and very rich. Women can do that as well, enrich their language, clean it up.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Beautiful, Writing, Style

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

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• Margot [Hentoff] used to write regularly for The Voice, for The New York Review of Books, for Harper's Bazaar, and she really had the most distinctive writing style, even more than mine, than I've ever seen in this business.

  Nat Hentoff

  New York, Book, Writing

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

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• I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.

  Camila Cabello

  Song, Writing, Personality

  Source: www.teenvogue.com

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• The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article.

  Jon Weisman

  Writing, Editors, Voice

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid.

  Kola Boof

  Kids, Writing, Style

  "Kola Boof: Words with the Author of the Best Black Book of 2006". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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• My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Writing, Boxing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Perhaps if there is anything remotely interesting about my writing style, it is this: more often than not I have no idea what the story is going to be about. Sometimes I have a fuzzy vision, or a glimpse of one scene, or a character. But mostly all I have is a random first sentence, and I follow it to see where it might go. For me, writing is the process of discovery, of gradually figuring out what happens in the story and how it ends, that makes writing an interesting process for me.

  Vandana Singh

  Writing, Character, Interesting

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