Writing Quotes - Page 14

• Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Theodore Roosevelt (2006). “The Works of Theodore Roosevelt - Volume”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

  August Wilson

  Editing, Eloquent

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• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Beautiful, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.8, Penguin

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• The best style is the style you don't notice.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Style, Creative Writing

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• A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Travel, Thinking, Vacation

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• The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.

  Harlan Ellison

  Becoming, Tricks, Staying

  "Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak". Book by Jayme Lynn Blaschke (p. 182), April 1, 2005.

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  Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Believe, Successful, Important

  Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”

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• A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Insightful, Story Writers, Stories

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• Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

  Matthew Arnold

  Secret, Famous Writers, Written Language

  Quoted in G.W. E. Russell, Collections and Recollections (1898)

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• Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Inspiration, Talking, People

  E. L. Doctorow, Christopher D. Morris (1999). “Conversations with E.L. Doctorow”, p.9, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

  Ben Bova

  Believe, Stories, Want

  Ben Bova (1998). “Twice Seven: Stories”, Eos

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• The story is not in the plot but in the telling.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Stories, Plot

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2015). “Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story”, p.123, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Book, Reading

  Esquire, Dec. 1934

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• It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Men, Echoes, Rose

  "Cocktail Time". Book by P. G. Wodehouse, 1958.

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• Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life.

  James Norman Hall

  Loafing, Productive

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• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Respect, Clever

  New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933

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• The pen is the tongue of the mind.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Teacher, Mind, Tongue

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1867). “Don Quixote”, p.370

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• People say, 'What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?' I say, they don't really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they're gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.

  R. L. Stine

  Cutting, People, Advice

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• The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

  Mark Twain

  Want, Satisfaction, Articles

  Mark Twain, Albert Bigelow Paine (1971). “Mark Twain's notebook”, Scholarly Pr

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• Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.

  George Singleton

  Flames, Desks, Ifs

  George Singleton (2008). “Pep Talks, Warnings, And Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom And Cautionary Advice For Writers”, p.59, Writer's Digest Books

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  Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

  Stephen King

  Lying, Kids, Simple

  Stephen King (2016). “It: A Novel”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

  Lawrence Kasdan

  Night, Rest Of Your Life, Homework

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

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• One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

  Jack Kerouac

  Life, Wisdom, Simple

  "Some of the Dharma". Book by Jack Kerouac, 1997.

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• 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, Air, Perfect

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

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• The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Night

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.13, North Atlantic Books

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