Writing Quotes - Page 19

• Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

  Clive Barker

  Spring, Stories, Firsts

  Clive Barker (2001). “Weaveworld”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Always be a poet, even in prose.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Poetry, Literature, Poetic

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.108, Courier Corporation

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• Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

  Samuel Beckett

  Silence, Matter, Stains

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• The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

  Robert Benchley

  Men, Pieces, Publishing

  James Thurber, The Bermudian Magazine, November 1950.

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• Great writers are the saints for the godless.

  Anita Brookner

  God, Saint, Bedtime

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• When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

  Samuel Butler

  Men, Years, Doubt

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4167, Delphi Classics

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• Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Book, Dare, Ifs

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

  Joseph Conrad

  Life, Art, Men

  Some Reminiscences ch. 1 (1912)

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• A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

  Norman Cousins

  Book, Reading, Together

  Saturday Review, April 15, 1978.

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• I don't have a moral plan, I'm a Canadian.

  David Cronenberg

  Moral, Filmmaker, Plans

  Quoted in Leslie Halliwell Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion (9th edn, 1988).

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• Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

  Clarence Darrow

  Art, Book, Giving

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• It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.

  Rene Daumal

  Goal, Confusion, Language

  Rene Daumal (2003). “A Night of Serious Drinking”, p.21, The Overlook Press

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• The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

  Philip K. Dick

  Reality, People, Silence

  1986 I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon,'How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later'.

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• Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

  Philip K. Dick

  Sorry, Fiction, Knows

  Philip K. Dick (1985). “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”, Doubleday Books

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• A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

  Emily Dickinson

  Enthusiasm, Said, Emily

  ?1872 Complete Poems, no.1212 (first published 1894).

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• Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

  Annie Dillard

  Memories, Work, Dark

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• I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

  George Eliot

  Conviction, Social, Offence

  George Eliot (1860). “Life and Letters”, p.565

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Reading Poetry, Immature

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

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• Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.

  Janet Frame

  Years, Land, Shopping

  Janet Frame (2001). “An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography”, Womens PressLtd

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• I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

  Robert Frost

  Powerful, Poetry, Curiosity

  1955 In the NewYork Times, 7 Nov.

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• We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Book, Needs, Speech

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.20, Courier Corporation

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• When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

  Joseph Heller

  Done, Tempted

  "The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations". Book edited by Peter Kemp, p. 303, 1997.

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• I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Book, Sacred, Next

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.213, Simon and Schuster

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• All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.

  Jimi Hendrix

  Naked, Bland, Feels

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• Half my life is an act of revision.

  John Irving

  Life, Half, Revision

  John Irving (2016). “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.14, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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