Writing Quotes - Page 16

• There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

  H. L. Mencken

  Discovery, Joy, Happy Accidents

  H.L. Mencken (1917). “A book of prefaces”, p.85, Рипол Классик

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• Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

  Stephen King

  Loud Voices, Stories, Sometimes

  Stephen King (2007). “Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

  William Faulkner

  Epic, Study, Window

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• 

  The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Leadership, Creativity, Positivity

  "The Tweaker" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. November 14, 2011.

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• It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends.

  Rick Riordan

  Book, Character, Good Friend

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• The book was long, and difficult to read, and Klaus became more and more tired as the night wore on. Occasionally his eyes would close. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Reading, Tired

  "The Bad Beginning". Book by Daniel Handler, September 30, 1999.

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• Just because something is typed-whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book-this does not mean that it is true.

  Daniel Handler

  Truth, Business, Book

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• A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Men, Wife, Should

  "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe".

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• I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

  Vikram Seth

  Future, World, Novelists

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• No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.

  George MacDonald

  Bible, God, Christian

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• Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.

  George Frideric Handel

  Music, God, Knowing

  Of the'Hallelujah Chorus' in his Messiah. Quoted in Romain Rolland Essays on Music (1948).

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• I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.

  George R. R. Martin

  Reading, Novelists, Needs

  "Interview with George R.R. Martin at Comicon". GeeksOn podcast (Episode 54), www.geekson.com. August 4, 2006.

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• I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.

  Leo Lionni

  Change, Children, Book

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• A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

  Vivian Gornick

  Life, Truth, Believe

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• Literature simply becomes richer after you've been fired, rejected, stranded, or had to change a few midnight diapers.

  Christian Bauman

  Change, Persistence, Rejection

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• Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist.

  William Raspberry

  Education, Opportunity, College

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• I have nothing but contempt for the deceitful thing men call 'happiness,' and find myself with no choice but to push my characters, whom I pour my heart and soul out to create, into the abyss of tragedy.

  Gen Urobuchi

  Happiness, Heart, Character

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• Women need to become literary "criminals," break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives.

  Kathy Acker

  Women, Reality, Law

  "Bodies of Work". Book by Kathy Acker, 1996.

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• Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

  Louise Rosenblatt

  Book, Reading, Giving

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• Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

  Joseph Addison

  Ambitious, Literature, Kind

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd (1811). “The Works: In Six Volumes”, p.84

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• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Editing, Crafts

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

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• If you wish to be a writer, write.

  Epictetus

  Philosophical, Wish, Ifs

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• The desire to write grows with writing.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Desire, Great Writing, Grows

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• I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Powerful, Spring, Night

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

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• No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Money, Work

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 5 Apr. 1776)

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