106 quotes found
“There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will come to nothing and be was...”
“I only write when the spirit moves me ... and the spirit moves me every day. William Faulkner, Oxford, Mississippi”
“I have written various words, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and bits of dismantled sentences, fragments of expressions and descriptions and all kinds of tentative combinations. Every now and agai...”
“There are students that are scattered, who need to see something through to the finish, but I would say there are possibly more who do not entertain the leaps of the mind that need to be nurtured, ...”
“...he told a story about the days when he was a reporter himself and how he had gotten so close to story that he finally couldn't write it...When I stared at something long enough, the lines blurre...”
“When you know what you want to communicate, ask yourself: Who is my audience and what does he know about the subject?”
“Talk about something else. Tell me about this book you are writing." "What book?" I say. Then : "Oh, I know what you mean. I am not doing that anymore. I couldn't finish._________I don't think he k...”
“Begin at the beginning as you understood it, proceed through the middle, continue to the end, and then stop," said Master Li, and he sauntered out to get drunk....”
“Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of s...”
“For people who make up stories for a living, that is the ultimate success: knowing that, when the book closes, when the series ends, the adventure is not over. It goes on without the creator, in th...”
“I have learned how I work best, and that is something that, if you're going to be a professional writer, you should be noticing: under what circumstances you work at your best, and to not get yours...”
“I usually start writing stories from tone and not from contentkind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction ...”
“It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries;but very often I think what keeps a writer from finding the words is that she grasps at them too soon, hurries, grabs. She doesnt wait for the w...”
“When the work is the best work, it's more like being a secretary than it is a creative person, you just sort of take the stuff down.”
“On the worst day of writing, the work is instructive. On the best day, the act is transcendent.”
“Briefer is better, so learn to write tight”
“So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, to blurt, is to be. The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realize...”
“Dont have the veins bulging in your biro.”
“Im now writing out of rage and I feel a kind of Nietzschean elation. Its tonic. I roar with laughter. I want to denounce everybody, tell everybody off. I go to my typewriter as I might go to my ma...”
“I'm writing a book. I'm almost finished. I numbered the pages. Now all I have to do is fill them in.”
