Writing Quotes - Page 20

• Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.

  Paul Kane

  Book, Creative, Fiction

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• Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

  John Keats

  Poetry, Soul, Doe

  Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 224

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• Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn't happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Effort, Leader, Marketing

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• No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Reading, Men

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

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• The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

  Salman Rushdie

  Running, Eye, Way

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• In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

  Jose Saramago

  Novelists, Essays, Essayists

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• Acting is easier - writing is more creative. The lazy man vies with the industrious.

  William Shatner

  Men, Lazy Man, Creative

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• Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.

  William Shatner

  Art, Character, Creative

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• The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Motivational, Happiness, Happy

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• Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Way, Feels

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• A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it.

  Danielle Steel

  Cake, Literature, Baking

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

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• Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

  Amy Tan

  Giving, Stories, Privilege

  "Author of The Joy Luck Club". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

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• Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Witty, Powerful, Stupid

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• Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Editors, Rejection, Criticism

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

  E. B. White

  Hard Work, Hard

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• Biography lends to death a new terror.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Biographies

  Oscar Wilde (1947). “The Happy Prince”, p.16, New Line Publishing

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• It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, Technique, Nonfiction

  "Ants and Answers: A Conversation with E. O. Wilson" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. January 15, 2010.

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• Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Book, Mean

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Ideas, Peg

  Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

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• A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

  Dylan Thomas

  Art, Creativity, Reality

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (1992). “On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

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• A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

  David Sedaris

  Insightful, Stories, Stuff

  David Sedaris (2010). “Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Tables, Fame, Enough

  "Who is the most outstanding person of 2001? You tell us" by Kate Kellaway, www.theguardian.com. November 24, 2001.

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• Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

  Oscar Wilde

  Sweet, Real, Creativity

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.22, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• you must not come lightly to the blank page.

  Stephen King

  Pages, Blank Pages, Blank

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• You can fix anything but a blank page.

  Nora Roberts

  Pages, Blank Pages, Blank

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