Good Writing Quotes - Page 3

• All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

  Kate Braverman

  Writing, Moon, Pyramids

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• I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid.

  Sophia Bush

  Teacher, Writing, School

  "Girl Crush Alert: How Sophia Bush Is Using Her Voice to Make a Difference" by Lauren Levinson, www.elle.com. August 15, 2013.

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• To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines.

  Richard Bausch

  Art, Jobs, Wall

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• Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [...] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is.

  Donald A. Norman

  Writing, Organization, Ideas

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 7, pp. 212 - 213., 1988.

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• Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

  Paula Danziger

  Silly, Writing, People

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• Good writing is difficult no matter what the reader's age-and children deserve the best.

  Aaron Shepard

  Children, Writing, Age

  Aaron Shepard (2000). “The Business of Writing for Children”, p.11, Shepard Publications

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• To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.

  William Gibson

  Real, Writing, World

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• The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Sheep, Needs

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.3, Anchor

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• I never feel more myself than when I’m writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.

  Anthony Minghella

  Writing, Enjoy, Feels

  Interview with Robert J. Elisberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 1999.

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• It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Blood, May

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.9

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• The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Inspirational, Writing, Knowing

  1917 Anne's House of Dreams, ch.24.

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• The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Long, Secret

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• Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

  William Bernbach

  Art, Writing, Taste

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• Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.

  John Travolta

  Writing, Mean, Tweak

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• Most good writing is clear, vigorous, honest, alive, sensuous, appropriate, unsentimental, rhythmic, without pretension, fresh, metaphorical, evocative in sound, economical, authoritative, surprising, memorable, and light.

  Ken Macrorie

  Memorable, Writing, Light

  Ken Macrorie (1985). “Telling Writing”, Boynton/Cook

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• Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.

  Francine Prose

  Writing, Skills, Choices

  Francine Prose (2009). “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• Good writing is formed partly through plan and partly through accident.

  Ken Macrorie

  Writing, Plans, Accidents

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• There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Writing, Way, Reader

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• I'm not an ad-libber. If I'm asked to ad-lib, I can ad-lib forever and it's really fun to do that, but I find that well-written scripts are put together very carefully. Once you start to ad-lib and add words to sentences, there's a slacking that happens. When it's good writing, it's taut. I'm not judging people who do ad-lib.

  James Marsters

  Fun, Writing, People

  Source: collider.com

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• Always care for the writing part first. Every good film project starts with good writing. If you have a good script, everything else follows. Writing is crucial.

  Giovanna Cau

  Writing, Scripts, Firsts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

  John Ciardi

  Writing, Mean, Men

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• Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing.
  [Lat., Scibendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.]

  Horace

  Writing, Foundation, Source

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• To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

  Virginia Woolf

  Morning, Home, Writing

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.20, Oxford University Press

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• Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.

  Ben Jonson

  Writing, Ready

  Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

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• Most of my stuff is just a series of false leads. I'll approach a story as a subject and then make a whole bunch of different runs at the lead. They're all good writing but they don't connect. So I end up having to string leads together.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Running, Writing, Together

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Ancient Gonzo Wisdom”, p.272, Pan Macmillan

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