Writing Quotes - Page 38

• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Bad Ass, Typewriters, Scary

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• For anyone who is: just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it'll work itself out. You just keep feeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing.

  Robin McKinley

  Reading, Giving, Energy

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• You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

  Jack London

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Jack London (2015). “Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer”, p.5, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• A story isn't about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time.

  Walter D. Wetherell

  Stories, Moments, Moments In Time

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• Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

  Michael Crichton

  Book, Done, Literature

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

  Gore Vidal

  Born, Company, Great Writers

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

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• What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Inspirational, Book, Good Authors

  All Trivia (1933) "Afterthoughts" pt. 5

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• 

  Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

  Graham Greene

  Love, Depression, Fear

  New York Times, January 8, 1981.

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• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Creativity, People, Creative

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• All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

  George Orwell

  Selfish, Lying, Lazy

  1946 'Why I Write'.

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• Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

  Philip Larkin

  Modern Novel, Ends, Muddle

  'New Fiction' no. 15, January 1978 (the 'classic formula' for a novel)

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• Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

  Harlan Ellison

  Intelligent, Praise, Critics

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• I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

  Mark Twain

  Flower, Mean, Simple

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• Writing is making sense of life.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Make Sense

  Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin, Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990). “Conversations with Nadine Gordimer”, p.139, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

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• If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

  Ray Bradbury

  Faith, Morning, Teaching

  "The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing". 2010.

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Long

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Creativity, Iron, Mind

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.137, Penguin

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• Sure, it's simple, writing for kids... Just as simple as bringing them up.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Kids, Simple

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.54, Ultramarine Publishing

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• It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

  C. J. Cherryh

  Long, Garbage, Okay

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• Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspirational, Moon, Glasses

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• What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

  Andre Gide

  Literature, Stories

  Andre Gide (2015). “The Immoralist”, p.46, Lulu Press, Inc

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• There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Library, Stories, Use

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.31, Ultramarine Publishing

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• I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

  Joss Whedon

  Hipster, Character, Giving

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

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• The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

  John Irving

  Way, Minutes, Define Yourself

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