167 quotes found
“If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? Youre a human being, w...”
“You can only write regularly if youre willing to write badly Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”
“Dont expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures in...”
“Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.”
“Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emilycomparatively good, that isand all the rest balderdashbalderdash, Emily.""Isuppose so," said Emily faintly.Her eyes brimmed with tearsher lips quivered. She...”
“From my writer's workshop, "Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!”
“What is writing but an expression of my own life?”
“No good story is quite true.”
“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”
“If you wanna be a writer, you must learn to paint a picture with words.”
“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. Can I be blunt on this subject...”
“Keep trying, especially at first. It can be very discouraging if your submissions keep being rejected by a publisher, but if your work is what people want to read, you should get there eventually!”
“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
“Nouns and verbs are the guts of the language. Beware of covering up with adjectives and adverbs.”
“The unwritten novel has a basilisks stare.”
“Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.”
“There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Something is happening everywhere. You just have to find the story in it.”
“Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story to make him/her forget, when...”
“Life is not a submarine.”
