Writing Life Quotes - Page 2

• A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Travel, Writing, Thinking

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• It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

  C. J. Cherryh

  Writing, Long, Garbage

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• A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.

  Annie Dillard

  Schedules, Chaos, Catching

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• If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Caring, Tools

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Book

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.88, Canongate Books

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• The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Time, Powerful, Book

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.

  Annie Dillard

  Gears, Belief, Desks

  Annie Dillard (2009). “The Writing Life”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Life, Being Alone, Writing

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• A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

  Annie Dillard

  Time, Hands, Schedules

  "The Writing Life". Book by Annie Dillard, 1989.

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• You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

  William S. Burroughs

  Fake People, Quality, Meals

  William S. Burroughs (1988). “The Western Lands”, Penguin Group USA

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• Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, People, Trying

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.834, e-artnow

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• Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

  William S. Burroughs

  Change, Trying, Muse

  William S Burroughs (2012). “The Western Lands”, p.10, Penguin UK

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• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Life, Hours

  Attributed to Annie Dillard in "The Writing Life", Book by Annie Dillard, 1989.

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• There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.

  Annie Dillard

  Sweet, Good Life, Reading

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• There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

  Annie Dillard

  Inspirational, Good Life, Good Day

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• Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.

  Samuel Beckett

  Success, Couple, Home

  Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, Maurice Harmon (1998). “No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider”, p.492, Harvard University Press

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• The writing life doesn't move in a straight line. I've had successes and rejections all along the way, at every stage of my career, and I will continue to do so. Acceptances and rejections don't define me. They're both part of what it means to be a writer. My job is to simply keep doing the work.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Moving, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.

  Graham Swift

  Writing, Cells, Long

  Graham Swift (2012). “Making an Elephant: Writing from Within”, p.56, Pan Macmillan

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• Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Exercise, Scary

  Ray Bradbury (1980). “The Stories of Ray Bradbury”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Jobs, Nice, Writing

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• The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Imagination, Routine

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• And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Doe, Alive

  Ray Bradbury (2015). “Zen in the Art of Writing”, p.8, HarperCollins UK

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• I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

  Darryl Pinckney

  Mistake, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 4, 2016.

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• You want to make a representative selection, but at the same time, you want to give a sense of the whole project. I have this big conflict in my writing life that I'm trying to work out all the time.

  Barbara Hamby

  Writing, Giving, Work Out

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