1,322 quotes found
“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.”
“Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way ...”
“I write to escape. I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it”
“The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.”
“I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.”
“I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down wha...”
“I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English departmen...”
“Sometimes it's impossible to say certain things ... Writing is something needed by man to share experience.”
“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way.”
“I am developing new coping mechanisms for lost words and lost negatives, as here for instance: compensate by describing the episode instead. When something is lost, redirect energy, follow the deri...”
“Good writers dont moralize, nor do they preach, but they do create longing for the true and the beautiful, and that is why you must write with Christ at the center of your reason for writing. That ...”
“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it anything more than that is advertising. ”
“But 'why then publish?' There are no rewardsOf fame or profit when the world grows weary.I ask in turn why do you play at cards?Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.It occupies me to ...”
“An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.”
“Good writing is always new.”
“He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line. ”
“At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]”
“Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.”
“I write to make sense of my life."-John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey”
“it's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft--they just do it”
