Writing Quotes - Page 29

• If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.

  Epictetus

  Would Be, Reader, Ifs

  Epictetus (1758). “All the Works of Epictetus: Which are Now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.179

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• My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.

  Thomas Hardy

  Artist, Ideas, Weakness

  Thomas Hardy (2007). “Thomas Hardy”, p.319, Wordsworth Editions

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• I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

  Ray Bradbury

  Eye, Skins, Peers

  Ray Bradbury (2013). “The Martian Chronicles”, p.4, Harper Collins

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• Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Moving, Long, Way

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• In the same way that a woman becomes a prostitute. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and finally I did it for money.

  Ferenc Molnar

  Way, Firsts, Please

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• I'm out there to clean the plate. Once they've read what I've written on a subject, I want them to think, 'That's it!' I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they've written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

  Richard Ben Cramer

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Personal Writing, Exploration

  "The Myth Maker". Interview with Bruce Weber, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 1985.

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• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Moving On, Powerful

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Feb 14, 2013

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• Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.

  Harlan Ellison

  Wise, Children, Ideas

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “Slippage: Previously Uncollected, Precariously Poised Stories”, p.103, Open Road Media

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• There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

  Haruki Murakami

  Perfect, Insightful, Despair

  Haruki Murakami (1987). “風の歌を聴け”

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• Every writer I know has trouble writing.

  Joseph Heller

  Young Writers, Trouble, Knows

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

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• If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

  Wilson Mizner

  Inspirational, Funny, Hilarious

  Quoted in Bennett Cerf, Try and Stop Me: A Collection of Anecdotes and Stories, Mostly Humorous (1944). Although this is usually credited to Mizner, the Los Angeles Times, 17 Mar. 1941, quotes Bob Oliver: "If you steal from one man, it's plagiarism. If you steal from several, it's research."

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• In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Years, Ordinary

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• The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.

  James Gunn

  Unique, Inheritance, Shapes

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• Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Long, Insightful, Needs

  Letter to Harrison Blake, 16 Nov. 1857 See Pascal 1; Woodrow Wilson 25

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• When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Powerful, Character, People

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

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• I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

  Joan Didion

  Mean, Thinking, Fearless

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 03, 2011

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• All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.

  Isabel Allende

  Stories, Ends, Interest

  "Tales of passion". TED Talks, www.ted.com. March, 2007.

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• Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Soul, Important, Needs

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• All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Truth, Freedom, Moveable Feast

  Ernest Hemingway (1992). “Complete Poems”, p.22, U of Nebraska Press

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• Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

  Mark Twain

  Pay, Offers, Writers And Writing

  Mark Twain (1992). “Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, Volume 1: 1852-1890”, p.644, Library of America

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• I don't like the strictly objective viewpoint [in which all of the characters' actions are described in the third person, but we never hear what any of them are thinking.] Which is much more of a cinematic technique. Something written in third person objective is what the camera sees. Because unless you're doing a voiceover, which is tremendously clumsy, you can't hear the ideas of characters. For that, we depend on subtle clues that the directors put in and that the actors supply. I can actually write, "'Yes you can trust me,' he lied." [But it's better to get inside the characters' heads.]

  George R. R. Martin

  Character, Thinking, Yes You Can

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• Write while the heat is in you.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Heat, Great Writing, Writing By Writers

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

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• If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

  Gustav Mahler

  Thinking, Boring, Faster

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• A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Should Have, Imagination

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