Writing Quotes - Page 35

• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

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• Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

  Jack Nicholson

  Suicide, Night, Two

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• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Schizophrenia, Form, Ragtime

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

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• If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.

  Dorothy Parker

  Friendship, Happy, Young Friends

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• I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

  Dylan Thomas

  Angel, Self, Expression

  Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris (1985). “The collected letters”, Scribner

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• I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you must write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

  Rick Riordan

  Thinking, Would Be, Matter

  "Advice For Writers". Q&A, rickriordan.com.

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• Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.

  E. M. Forster

  Ideas, Novelists, Expansion

  E M Forster (2016). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.143, Hachette UK

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• Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on

  Louis L'Amour

  Inspirational, Kids, Water

  Louis L'Amour (2008). “Education of a Wandering Man”, p.102, Bantam

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• Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Cynical

  "Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend".

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• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Book, Reading, Feels

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• I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

  Dorothy Parker

  Revision, Seven, Great Author

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words - the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Long, Immortality, Proxy

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• You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, World, Worst

  "Dictionary of Quotations in Communications" by Lilless McPherson Shilling, p. xvi, 1997.

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• Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

  Richard Miller

  Wrestling, Way, Earning

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• Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Music, Dance, Education

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2007). “Twilight of the Idols with the Antichrist and Ecce Homo”, p.47, Wordsworth Editions

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• Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

  Susan Sontag

  Dream, Reading, Becoming

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• Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.

  Meg Cabot

  Kids, Giving, People

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• To hold a pen is to be at war.

  Voltaire

  Peace, War, Pens

  Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental, October 04, 1748.

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• My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

  Joseph Conrad

  Trying, Tasks, Power Of Words

  The Nigger of the Narcissus preface (1897)

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• Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.

  Don DeLillo

  Identity, Form, Mass

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.143, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.

  William Faulkner

  Thinking, Men, Differences

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• There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can't get a good story out of it.

  Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Stupid, Ideas, Stories

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• Everything that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.

  Tapani Bagge

  Stronger, Stories, Use

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Editing, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.

  Stephen King

  Reading, Skills, Answers

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

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