Writing Quotes - Page 30

• If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

  Stephen King

  Caring, Tools, Creative Writers

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.

  Laura Kasischke

  Struggle, Thinking, People

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• The unsaid, for me, exerts great power.

  Louise Glück

  Unsaid, Great Power

  "Disruption, Hesitation, Silence". Article by Louise Glück, The American Poetry Review, Volume 22, No. 5, pp. 30-32, www.jstor.org. September-October 1993.

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• Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

  Ann Patchett

  Disappointment, Heart, Imagination

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.27, Harper Collins

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• Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

  Philip K. Dick

  Sorry, Fiction, I Am Sorry

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

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• Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

  Alice Munro

  People, Anecdotes, Stories

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Sep 17, 2011

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• You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

  Larry Niven

  Stories, Story Writers, Novel

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• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Odds, Stories, Favors

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able to take a break from being a writer.

  Stephen Leigh

  May, Able, Break

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• Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love.

  Melissa Scott

  Jobs, Ideas, Levels

  Melissa Scott (1997). “Conceiving the Heavens: Creating the Science Fiction Novel”, Heinemann Drama

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• Most beginning writers - and I was the same - are like chefs trying to cook great dishes that they've never tasted themselves. How can you make a great - or even an adequate - bouillabaisse if you've never had any? If you don't really understand why people read mysteries - or romances or literary novels or thrillers or whatever - then there's no way in the world you're going to write one that anyone wants to publish. This is the meaning of the well-known expression "Write what you know."

  Daniel Quinn

  Expression, People, Romance

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• In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

  L. Sprague de Camp

  Character, Story Writers, Details

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• Whether or not you write well, write bravely.

  Bill Stout

  Wells

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• It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How
  else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?

  Vita Sackville-West

  Butterfly, Moments, Slips

  Vita Sackville-West (2015). “Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings”, Macmillan

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• No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of your bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Running, Book, Sleep

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• If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.

  Steven Galloway

  Would Be, Possibility, Very Good

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• In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

  Doris Lessing

  Stories, Process, Cooks

  "Routine inquiries: what goes into a writing 'process'?" by Jean Hannah Edelstein, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2008.

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• You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

  Grace Paley

  Needs

  "Taking Risks: The Writer as Effective Teacher" by Nina Darnton, www.nytimes.com. April 13, 1986.

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• If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Thinking, Choices, Finding Yourself

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• Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Real, Two, Talent

  "By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades".

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• Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light - and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau - into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Beautiful, Light, Play

  Nadine Gordimer (2012). “Living in Hope and History”, p.199, A&C Black

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• Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Travel, Mind, Road Trip

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.700, Simon and Schuster

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• I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

  Isaac Asimov

  Life, Breathe, Reason

  Isaac Asimov (1995). “Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters”, Doubleday Books

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• If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work.

  Russell Banks

  Discipline, Attention, Pals

  Interview with Robert I. Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 18, 2005.

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