Fiction Writing Quotes

• Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

  Robert Morgan

  Powerful, Writing, Southern

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• The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds.

  Harold Hayes

  Drama, Writing, Men

  46 Copy quote

• Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

  Louise Brooks

  Inspiration, Writing, Elimination

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• You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

  Isaac Asimov

  Work, Writing, Persistence

  13 Copy quote

• Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Editors, Rejection

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

  Harlan Ellison

  Book, Writing, World

  "Quit Your Day Job!: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer". Book by Jim Denney and James D. Denney, 2003.

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• I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

  John Dalton

  Writing, Years, Iowa

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• Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax.

  Colin Greenland

  Sex, Writing, Desire

  46 Copy quote

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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  Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Night, Journey

  99 Copy quote

• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

  Woody Allen

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  "Shakespeare, Woody Allen And A Certain Qantas A380" by Christine Negroni, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 23, 2012.

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• Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

  Alice Munro

  Writing, People, Anecdotes

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Sep 17, 2011

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• Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

  John Gardner

  Writing, Sea, Helping

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• If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Persistence, Rejection

  45 Copy quote

• Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

  Pete Hamill

  Writing, World, Heavy

  12 Copy quote

• I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Funny Life, Writing, Sound

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• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Creativity, People

  53 Copy quote

• Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

  Ivana Trump

  Funny, Stupid, Inspiration

  34 Copy quote
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  I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

  Douglas Adams

  Love, Inspirational, Hilarious

  "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (Dirk Gently, Book 3)". Book by Douglas Adams, 2002.

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• Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Science, Fiction

  Following the Equator ch. 15, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897) See Byron 33; Chesterton 6

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• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Character, Passion

  34 Copy quote

• Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

  Stephen King

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

  Michael Crichton

  Book, Writing, Done

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Intelligent, Praise

  58 Copy quote