167 quotes found
“...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be as thin as your hunger...”
“I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not com...”
“Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl...”
“Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.”
“Too often we sit back and speak platitudes of the nitty-gritty bits of writing; the editing, the story structure, the verbal sparring vs. banter, the character development, the world-building becom...”
“We should be told: Write fast, write close to the bone, write for ten hours straight until youre not thinking in words anymore, but in colors, in smells, in waves of memory. Right what you care abo...”
“What you don't write is often more important than what you do”
“Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of ou...”
“Rejection is the run in the pantyhose of life.”
“When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.”
“Lots of times Im not crazy about the writing, but I keep moving ahead and somehow it gets better. The important thing is to move forward.”
“Clarity trumps all rules.”
“If you aren't willing to put your best work out there, write for yourself. Don't ever publish.”
“You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.”
“Make time to write every day. The writing muscle is like any other muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.”
“In fact, talent is as common as mud; whats rare is the motivation to sit down and actually do something with ones talent, the discipline to do it regularly, and the persistence to stick with it unt...”
“Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?”
“To write, live.”
“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”
“Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.”
