106 quotes found
“Want to be a writer? take a good book a good pen and a notepad to bed with you every night of your life.”
“Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the...”
“Its very hard weirdly hard to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down and write and find that place where youre just involved and enjoying the imaginary place youve discove...”
“What one gains in technique can lead to deforestation in the writing that is both good and bad. Keep the energy and the willingness to proceed stupidly.”
“You cannot write the pages you love without writing the pages you hate. Nothing that you write is pointless, useless, or unnecessary. The product requires the process. The good days may be more enj...”
“Mailer famously labeled writing the spooky art. He was right. There's a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and chat, but the big decisions are...”
“Don’t hold back and save stuff for the next book. Put everything you have into the one you’re writing, - Michael Connelly”
“I don’t shy from writing about incredibly unpleasant, distressing things. And I get a kick out of it I confess. I like doing that.”
“To write a novel is to dream a story and write it down on the page. That’s why the power of a really good story is one of true magic. Good stories engage the reader utterly in the writer’s dream so...”
“There’s a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate, but it better be a strong, clear line.' As a teacher, I took that advice to heart. As a writer, I asked, “'But what happens if the line is...”
“The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”
“You haven't seen yourself until you look through the eyes of your characters.~Tanela Hicks”
“You haven't seen yourself until you look through the eyes of your characters."~Tanela Hicks”
“I come up with an idea and I’ll start throwing little suggestions for possible scenes into a folder, but before I seriously sit down to write Word One, they whole outline is finished. Sue me. It wo...”
“I write in complete silence using only two fingers so I can’t type faster than I edit at the same time, saving me from having to go back. Although it does create a lot of capitalization issues. And...”
“It’s amazing how my mind opens up right when I have to run on the treadmill. I’ve finished three chapters rather than run a mile.”
“I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content—kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction...”
“There are three difficulties in authorship: – to write anything worth publishing - to find honest men to publish it - and to get sensible men to read it. — Caleb C. Colton [1780-1832]”
“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 ...”
“I’m now writing out of rage — and I feel a kind of Nietzschean elation. It’s tonic. I roar with laughter. I want to denounce everybody, tell everybody off. I go to my typewriter as I might go to my...”
