Writing Quotes - Page 27

• My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

  Elmore Leonard

  Advice, Important, Trying

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• All writing is a process of elimination.

  Martha Albrand

  Elimination, Process

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• Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Hands, Ashamed, Famous Writers

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.233, Penguin

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• I hate writing, I love having written.

  Dorothy Parker

  Hate, Written, I Hate

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• Writing is its own reward.

  Henry Miller

  Rewards

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

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• Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Character, Glasses, Want Something

  "Uncovering the secrets of storytelling" by Paul Willis, www.cnn.com. December 19, 2008.

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• A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

  William Faulkner

  Fiction, Telling The Truth

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• No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

  E. B. White

  Attitude, Reader, Patronizing

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

  Orson Scott Card

  Impact, Story Writers, Essentials

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• No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Mother, Children, Father

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1825). “The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.108

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Long

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I can’t remember how many times I advised students to stop writing the sunny hours and write from where it hurts: No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep.

  Anne Bernays

  Hurt, Sleep, Want

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• A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Words Of Wisdom, Fiction

  A Room of One's Own ch. 1 (1929)

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• The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

  Leo Rosten

  Story Writers, Helping, Reason

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• There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Inspiring, Lying, Men

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “Henry Esmond: And Lovel the Widower”, p.106

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• Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

  Neil Gaiman

  Jobs, Winning, Peculiar

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• It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Fall, Rooms

  Samuel Johnson (1966). “Johnsonian miscellanies”, Constable

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• To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

  Truman Capote

  Music, Creativity, Pleasure

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

  Anais Nin

  Commitment, Culture, Use

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Heart, Why We Write

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

  Stephen King

  Kings, Doors, Blank Pages

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

  Louis L'Amour

  Water, Flow, Turns

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• If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.

  Terry Brooks

  Heart, Too Much, Enough

  Terry Brooks (2003). “Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life”, p.163, Del Rey

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• A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

  William Faulkner

  Two, Imagination, Experience

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• There are three difficulties in authorship; to write any thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish it — and to get sensible men to read it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Three, Literature

  "Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think".

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