1,322 quotes found
“A book gets rejected because it's not ready to be published.”
“To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.”
“All plots are cliche.”
“Less is more.”
“Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.”
“The scientist in me worries that my happiness is nothing more than a symptom of bipolar disease, hypergraphia from a postpartum disorder. The rest of me thinks that artificially splitting off the s...”
“The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases.”
“Good girls like myself need subversion. Being solemn, I aspire to comedy. Being a novelist, I aspire to the musical. Being organized, I aspire to luminous chaos. Loving the power of grammar and the...”
“ What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ours...”
“One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. Shes the love of your life, ...”
“Stories do not change the world. Ive learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way.... I mean its not the world I want to change.”
“I intend all my characters must escape from impossible situations; if they are not in trouble, then as a writer, I am.”
“So I have 8 to 10 screenplays written and unproduced. And frankly, some of them are my favorite stories. I have a Western version of The Count Of Monte Cristo where the count has a clockwork hand. ...”
“We are writing in the age of stylish minimalism that in truth has become even more cautious because of word processing. Nowadays, creative writing students are underwriting rather than overdoing it.”
“A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rule...”
“Genuineness is often sacrificed in order to showcase the author's control over the form and subject matter, the end result technically sound but emotionally cold.”
“Write every day. Even if it's only a letter.”
“Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make ones living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilizatio...”
“Vigorous writing is concise.”
“Then Diana puts too many murders into [her stories]. She says most of the time she doesnt know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.”
