Writing Quotes - Page 33

• A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

  Raymond Chandler

  Stories, Storytelling, Good Story

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.75, Univ of California Press

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• The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  Stephen King

  Movie, Sisterhood, Epic

  FaceBook post by Stephen King from Feb 06, 2013

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• Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

  John Steinbeck

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Couple

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Reading, Black

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.198, Grove Press

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• Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

  Joseph Conrad

  Reality, Speech, Well Known

  1911 Under Western Eyes, prologue.

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• Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

  Franz Kafka

  Sweet, Rewards, Wonderful

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• The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

  Robert Cormier

  Beautiful, Brain, Phrases

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• You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Change, Inspiring

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

  Jack Kerouac

  Way, Inspiration To Write, Writers Reading

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they're seeing now, what we'll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.

  Jack Kerouac

  Night, Giving, Genius

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

  Jules Renard

  Talking, Way, Interrupted

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• Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Done, Noise

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• I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

  Tom Clancy

  Simple, Trying, Stories

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Use, Using Words, Ink

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• If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

  Elmore Leonard

  May, Narrative, Way

  "Seven deadly sins" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. July 21, 2001.

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• The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

  Raymond Chandler

  Mean, Pushing, Trouble

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.216, Univ of California Press

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• Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

  T. S. Eliot

  Communication, Poetry, Understanding

  1929 Dante.

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• Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

  Neil Gaiman

  Inspirational, Motivational, Cancer

  Neil Gaiman (2012). “Coraline”, p.7, A&C Black

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• A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Successful, Crafts

  Letter to H. H. Rogers, 26 - 28 Apr. 1897

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• Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Ideas, Easy, Hard

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• I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

  Andre Dubus

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

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• Imagination is more important than knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Positive, Leadership

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Morning, Color, Missing

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.86, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

  Oscar Wilde

  Morning, Perfection, Poetry

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.225, Wordsworth Editions

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• The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

  John le Carre

  Cat, Stories, Sat

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