40 quotes found
“In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't ge...”
“If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?”
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it...”
“I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.”
“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”
“Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ”
“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”
“Write to your fear.”
“Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be in...”
“Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.”
“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”
“A book is not completed till it's read.”
“But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.”
“But apart from these lazinesses of logic, what makes the story so tired is the failure of the writer to reach for anything but the nearest cliche'. "Shouldered his way," "only to be met," "crashing...”
“It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't be careful enough.”
