Writing Quotes - Page 11

• Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Real, Needs, Want

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• If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

  Elmore Leonard

  Inspire, Sound, Ifs

  Elmore Leonard (2007). “Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing”, William Morrow

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• I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

  Tom Stoppard

  Play, Way, Contradicting

  Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). “Tom Stoppard in Conversation”, p.49, University of Michigan Press

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• I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

  Stephen King

  Character, Trying, Monsters

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• I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.

  Ray Bradbury

  Believe, Taken, Thinking

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

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• If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

  Honore de Balzac

  Suicide, Wall, Artist

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• It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense

  Mark Twain

  Nonsense

  Mark Twain, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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

  Allen Ginsberg

  Voice, Design, Gains

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• If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Passion, Doubt

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• If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

  David Brin

  Family Friends, Family Life, Inspiration To Write

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• I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Successful, Interesting, Doubt

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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, Thinking, Typewriters

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• Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

  Nancy Kress

  Fiction, Stuff, Screwed Up

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• Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

  Anne McCaffrey

  Together, Using Words, Story Writers

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• All the information you need can be given in dialogue.

  Elmore Leonard

  Confusing, Needs, Information

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• All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Matter, Story Writers, Stories

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• The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Want, Facts, Reason

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• There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground.

  Edward Gibbon

  Air, Castles, Building

  Edward Gibbon (1869). “The Autobiography and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon, the Historian”, p.164

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• Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.

  Jules Renard

  Way, Interrupted, Reading Writing

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• I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

  Clarence Budington Kelland

  Morning, Typewriters, Scream

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• The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.

  Jean Cocteau

  Reality, Spirit, Appearance

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• Don't explain why it works; explain how you use it.

  Steven Brust

  Design, Use

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• If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Bangs, Ends, Fiction Writers

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• I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters.

  George R. R. Martin

  Strong, Hate, Character

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  I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

  Douglas Adams

  Love, Inspirational, Hilarious

  "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (Dirk Gently, Book 3)". Book by Douglas Adams, 2002.

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