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de480f0 When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate. writing persistence motivational failure John Steinbeck
d36bf02 There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well. writing professionalism creative-process Agatha Christie
f3468dd "But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind." writer writing file how-to-write imagine focus quiet Anne Lamott
632b993 The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again. writing Anne Lamott
6fd6715 It's funny, for all it took was a broken heart and that alone was enough, enough for her to do everything she ever dreamed of. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
edb2156 I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it. writing Anaïs Nin
6c14311 The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly. writing writers Julian Barnes
1286118 This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete. writing muse discipline Steven Pressfield
372a061 Appreciate the moment of a first kiss; it may be the last time you own your heart. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
8dd7332 Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. reading writing society norms politeness Stephen King
c357f7f The truth is I didn't need therapy; I just needed to feel loved and know that someone out there craved my attention. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
f143eda Society will always be too fragile to accept us for all that makes us beautiful. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
b97d9ec Suddenly, everything was beautiful. The way she viewed the world was nothing more but a reflection of herself. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
b1cdb3f Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. writing flying descriptive prose Haruki Murakami
688f4e8 One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed. writing dress-up embarrassing vocabulary style Stephen King
62d54c2 Ink, a Drug. writing ink writers-on-writing Vladimir Nabokov
44384f1 Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself,. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got. courage writing fear Steven Pressfield
f337816 You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer. writing inspirational Jean M. Auel
5dfba7c You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more. writing writing-craft Michael Connelly
38de18d And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't. loneliness feminism writing gender-roles Jennifer Donnelly
394929a It smells terrible in here.' Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate. humour writing odors stink smells John Kennedy Toole
5f5f1f4 It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. writing clarity art communication Robert A. Heinlein
2f66404 When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity. suicide writing Charles Bukowski
df699cf "Have you thought of an ending?" "Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant." "Oh, that won't do! Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?" "It will do well, if it ever came to that." "Ah! And where will they live? That's what I often wonder." writing books sam-gamgee frodo endings happy-endings lotr J.R.R. Tolkien
7de5176 Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole. writing eudora-welty storytelling listening Eudora Welty
0e95b59 Words have weight. words writing truth Stephen King
9fa5dfa I had to learn to live without you and I couldn't make sense of it, because I left so much of me inside of you. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
b63aaa4 To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
7809342 "and sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think poetry writing Nikki Giovanni
3b7d03e The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. writing Haruki Murakami
5c85ed7 writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all writing Charles Bukowski
8445fcf I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book. writing navelgazing Erica Jong
96c4d54 A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love. romance writing love Honoré de Balzac
29438c5 In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. war writing Tim O'Brien
cf461a1 She was broken from moment to moment, watching her world collide she felt lost inside herself. She fell apart for a passion that flamed beneath her. She waited and died a hundred times, it dripped from her pores. The moment she let go, she soared over the stillness like the star she was born to be. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
6714faf "1) Work on one thing at a time until finished. 2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring." 3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. 4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time! 5) When you can't create you can work. 6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. 7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. 8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. 9) Discard the Program when you feel like it--but go back to it next day. writing anais-nin rules Henry Miller
32dffd8 It was never about the world being too big, it was more like she was too much for the world to handle. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
55c7c04 It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. writing humor bad-writing dullness P.G. Wodehouse
f204174 "The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to disappointments because it gives a heightened concept of living, it leaves out the dull or stagnant moments. You, in your books, also have a heightened rhythm, and a sequence of events so packed with excitement that I expected all your life to be delirious, intoxicated." Literature is an exaggeration, a dramatization, and those who are nourished on it (as I was) are in great danger of trying to approximate an impossible rhythm. Trying to live up to Dostoevskian scenes every day. And between writers there is a straining after extravagance. We incite each other to jazz-up our rhythm." writing Anaïs Nin
1f526a0 Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. writing Joseph Campbell
1422d54 "Jane's stories are too sensible. Then Diana puts too much murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them." -Anne Shirley" reading writing friends humor L.M. Montgomery
d246386 Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right--in the way that's best for us. story reading writing god life nesbit railway christian mistakes E. Nesbit
7994c48 Maybe I hope too much. Maybe I dream too much or maybe I love too much to just give up on you. happyquotes inspired instadaily instaquote pinquotes poems quoteoftheday relationships rmdrake spokenword vsco writer poetry writing quote hope inspirational inspirationalquotes sadquotes typewriter tattoo sayings lovequotes quotes robert m drake
3e3004d Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance. writing-life writing fear Steven Pressfield
898556f If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read. writing inspirational Giacomo Casanova
00cb9b8 "At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that -- the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and 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 ... 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 that or not. writing learning-by-doing trial-and-error craftsmanship creative-writing craft training writing-process talent William Faulkner
f2d8c81 Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. reading writing philosophy digression wit Ray Bradbury
8234b67 At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write. writing Ian McEwan
923aecd I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time. suffering writing Jonathan Safran Foer
e1a2667 Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. writing inspirational Anne Lamott
3800f35 Inspiration comes of working every day. writing inspirational Charles Baudelaire
9851d65 For when all else is done, only words remain. Words endure. history writing letter Kate Mosse
fffe1d3 No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness. women writing quisqueya haiti Edwidge Danticat
b80e05d If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious. writing inspiration composition focus concentration Muriel Spark
1108923 Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down. risk writing inspiration margaret-langstaff Ray Bradbury
7eddee1 The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind. writing inspirational Walter Mosley
4b530ae My pen shall heal, not hurt. writing satire L.M. Montgomery
5977d96 Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more. writing reality novels realism writers Michel Houellebecq
e0966cc For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing. reading writing Virginia Woolf
d216474 The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are. writing writers Anne Lamott
6184d7f I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have. writing inspirational Natalie Goldberg
bd07e72 You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it. writing Thomas Harris
e4aaa64 Writer's block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows. writing Joseph Campbell
6c09794 The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes. seasons winter poets poetry writing apple april auden byron de-la-mare insomnia longfellow may morris nocturnal season september shelley spender tennyson pope apples coffee spring wordsworth milton fall hart-crane autumn tea keats night writers burns schiller Helen Bevington
c6cec63 Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. literature nature poetry writing green drama Virginia Woolf
776af6f I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. writing love Haruki Murakami
e4b6863 M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises... words magic writing neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
e98562a Some of this book--perhaps too much--has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it--and perhaps the best of it--is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up. writing Stephen King
6aa39a8 Cheekbones that cut like ice and eyes like liquid scotch. Loren Hale is an alcoholic beverage and he doesn't even know it. love-story writing college-romance loren-hale Krista Ritchie
99dd1a6 Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious. poetry writing Charles Bukowski
018cc60 Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things. writing imagination fantasy shadows L.M. Montgomery
326f04f I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. writing Tom Stoppard
bff94ff Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. writing Haruki Murakami
5b83e01 Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. writing self-awareness self-recognition readers writers Marcel Proust
103f0f6 "If you only write when you're inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist because you're going to have to make your word count today and those words aren't going to wait for you whether you're inspired or not. poetry writing Neil Gaiman
35c789c "I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down." memories writing encouragement child young memoir childhood writers Anne Lamott
18b757b Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure. writing Natalie Goldberg
a792d51 if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading. reading writing Paulo Coelho
d74acf9 If only these walls could talk...the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone's a liar. writing Gregg Olsen
7404189 Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience. poems writer poetry writing plath journals sylvia-plath poet Sylvia Plath
98cb8ac A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved. writer writing vision jack-kerouac memory Jack Kerouac
11216a3 Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears... writing Jack Kerouac
201822a "The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. ...I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss." writing creativity obedience Madeleine L'Engle
04391b2 Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. reading writing A.S. Byatt
65d5a2a Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive. writing Ursula K. LeGuin
a6ce768 The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness. writing craft painting creative-process wholeness Madeleine L'Engle
a48299a "Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?" writing film David Mamet
7b0c75a Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come. writing Joseph Campbell
7498079 As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself. writing John Steinbeck
a966473 All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful. writing on-writing storytelling stories Umberto Eco
c56c09c [A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start. writing dialogue P.G. Wodehouse
1ec3a1b So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. writing daily-life preoccupations superficiality subconscious creative-process Graham Greene
b6a96d1 Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. writing storytelling readers Rebecca Solnit
43d8fac Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace. writing Franz Kafka
febbb30 . . . None of us are born as passive generic blobs waiting for the world to stamp its imprint on us. Instead we show up possessing already a highly refined and individuated soul. Another way of thinking of it is: We're not born with unlimited choices. We can't be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. writing identity Steven Pressfield
b17039b My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college. writing semi-colons Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
8ade2c6 Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. poetry writing Seamus Heaney
7244d00 I my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I my hurt, and even it, a little, for now I could write a death, a loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. writing Neil Gaiman
149dcb0 Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. poets poetry writing reality writers creativity Julian Barnes
bfb8ea0 "No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say -- snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola -- something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present. writing southern-literature southerners Natalie Goldberg
f9ce1df Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons 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 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. writing reading-books Stephen King
5efd277 Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? writing Annie Dillard
fd42a65 I believe the first draft of a book -- even a long one -- should take no more than three months...Any longer and -- for me, at least -- the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. writing stephen-king wise writers Stephen King
8df12d8 But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it. writing Neil Gaiman
cbc072b The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it. writing-life writing Roald Dahl
253f48e However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind's eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favourite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare's words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand. women writing Virginia Woolf
83b98e9 Listen, Stephen King used to write in the washroom of his trailer after his kids went to sleep. Harlan Ellison wrote in the stall of a bathroom of his barracks during boot camp. Elmore Leonard got up at 5 AM every morning to write before work. Every time my alarm goes off at 5 AM and I don't want to get up, or I would rather sit down after work and play a videogame, I think about those guys. Take care of your family. They need you and love you. Make time for them. Then stop screwing around and finish your damn book. writing Bernard Schaffer
134ec78 Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I my hurt, and even it, a little, for now I could write a death, a loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own. writing writers Neil Gaiman
580827f a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life. writing life Tobias Wolff
35d95a0 My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child-wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. writing Virginia Woolf
2a2ae7d If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity. writing Haruki Murakami
3cac241 Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say. writing writers Mark Z. Danielewski
c14e024 A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion. writing Anaïs Nin
13fb2cc Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape. writing control Craig Ferguson
3459c20 The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think. writing Anne Morrow Lindbergh
0a63723 At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty. writing Nicole Krauss
bb6c924 Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame writing the-beats howl Allen Ginsberg
17612f9 Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blase ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days ... the region of pure poetry. irony poetry writing fantasy grotesque novel writers creativity Charles Baudelaire
20ed143 Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures. writing treasure trash ray-bradbury Ray Bradbury
c042382 When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules. writing Umberto Eco
b4cbf47 "I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. writing-life writing inspirational-quotes humor earning-a-living author-quotes self-support writing-quotes gift creative-process talent quotes self-confidence Cormac McCarthy
b2e0d74 From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short. writing humor pg-wodehouse mission P.G. Wodehouse
60df531 To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. looks reading writing handsomeness face gift talent William Shakespeare
f577bbd Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow. writing Umberto Eco
476ed5b The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling? writing the-braindead-megaphone George Saunders
10c4464 "I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, "Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight." My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: "When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town - to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go." travel writing trust remedy self-recovery pen healing self-esteem writers bell hooks
f5eede9 Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. passion writing love E.M. Forster
b073c2d The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote. writing inspiration pantheism sword-sentiments justice William Blake
c24ea57 ... it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized. Brilliant and effective, powerful and masterly, as it may appear for a day or two, it must wither at nightfall; it cannot grow in the minds of others. Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. writing gender-identity gender Virginia Woolf
a597803 Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. writing authors readers Virginia Woolf
dc7792c If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door. writing writer-s-block Anne Lamott
9957bb9 Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. writing ernest-hemingway Ernest Hemingway
c1bb09f People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe. writing creative-process Neil Gaiman
3a22dd1 (An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours. unhappiness writing observation writers Rudyard Kipling
83a9d04 After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there. writing interior-life life-of-the-mind writers Gertrude Stein
761db6d "The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt." writing complexity art Joyce Carol Oates
59ff95d "It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn't be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more confused it seems even to me, like hazy prospects seen from too far away, since everything passes, even the memory of our most scalding tears and our heartiest laughter; our eyes soon dry, our mouths resume their habitual shape; the only memory that remains to me is that of a long tedious time that lasted for several winters, spent in yawning and wishing I were dead" writing Gustave Flaubert
9a04b42 Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity. writing Stephen King
9885054 "Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way. pain writing driving-forces hardship creative-process creation Cormac McCarthy
bb40c1c Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. writing inspirational creativity Steven Pressfield
46380b2 A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about cliches: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought cliches got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the cliched saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliche. writing Khaled Hosseini
e20dfe6 Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing. writing philosophy inspirational Anne Rice
e17365e "You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it's true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but "didn't have time to read," I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in ... Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway." writing stephen-king Stephen King
66460b3 It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged. writing tools Stephen King
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