1,322 quotes found
“A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.”
“Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory....”
“I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being concious of living.”
“Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it”
“Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear th...”
“Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”
“Write like it matters, and it will.”
“Sometimes, as much as writing saves ones own life, you cannot imagine how it will save anothers. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind...”
“It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that k...”
“Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of...”
“President Bartlet: There's a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn't think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but ...”
“Art glows with faith even in its weakest parts. At every moment, writing is an act of self-confidence the sheerest, most determined, most stubborn self-belief. You CAN have faith and doubt at the ...”
“Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin the desks too big, the desks too small, theres too much noise, theres too much quiet, its too hot, ...”
“If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable lone...”
“I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God ...”
“After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.”
“I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.”
“Rereading parts of your novel while writing is like doubling back at rerunning parts of a marathon midrace.”
“Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.”
“There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.”
