Writing Quotes - Page 36

• True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

  Alexander Pope

  Dance, Art, Moving

  "The Works of Alexander Pope".

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• What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Book, Best Effort

  Quoted in William Seward, Biographia (1799)

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• The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

  Russell Baker

  Real, Work, Fit

  Russell Baker (2011). “Growing Up”, p.157, RosettaBooks

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• If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

  Kingsley Amis

  Editing, Littles, Annoying

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• Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

  Gloria Steinem

  Should, Feels, Battered Women

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• A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Giving, Bud

  "The Poetics of Reverie". Book by Gaston Bachelard, 1960.

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• Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~

  Dr. Seuss

  Mean, Simple, Long

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• The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Jobs, Believe, Commitment

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• I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Song, Believe, Character

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.102, Ultramarine Publishing

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• Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.

  Thomas McGuane

  Scary, Literature, Care

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• A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Problem, Solve

  "Blogging in the classroom: why your students should write online" by Michael Drennan, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2012.

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• I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

  Terry Pratchett

  Book, Interesting, Teeth

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• Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Fighting, Thinking, Stink

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• We all are rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom.

  Ray Bradbury

  Facts, Rich, Buried

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• You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.

  Stephen King

  Despair, Way, Excitement

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.130, Simon and Schuster

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• Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.

  James Russell Lowell

  Children, Fit, Reviews

  James Russell Lowell (1873). “The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”, p.162

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• Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.

  Steven Pressfield

  Morning, Coffee, Today

  Steven Pressfield (2002). “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”, p.112, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit, because I know when I was younger I felt like authors were like wizards or something. Turns out they're total muggles.

  John Green

  Doe, Muggles, Wizards

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• If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Technology, Fiction, Modern

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.169, Grove Press

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• One nice thing about putting the thing away for a couple of months before looking at it is that you start appreciate your own wit. Of course, this can be carried too far. But it's kind of cool when you crack up a piece of writing, and then realize you wrote it. I recommend this feeling.

  Steven Brust

  Couple, Nice, Appreciate

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• For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I'm surprised where the journey takes me.

  Jack Dann

  Love, Journey, Exploration

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• What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Doe, Want

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• I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Thinking, Voice, Giving

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• I believe that in a good collaboration, the authors bring their strengths to the story; one author's strength cancels the other author's weakness, and back and forth it goes.

  Jack Dann

  Believe, Weakness, Collaboration

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• An artist's career always begins tomorrow

  James Whistler

  Art, Careers, Tomorrow

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