Good Writing Quotes - Page 5

• 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 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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• Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Writing, Scary, Important

  John Edgar Wideman, Bonnie TuSmith (1998). “Conversations with John Edgar Wideman”, p.98, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Ken Macrorie

  Writing, Plans, Accidents

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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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• 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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• 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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• Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

  Pat Conroy

  Writing, Thinking, Form

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• As I started to read nonfiction in the mid '70s, I discovered, holy cow, there was a lot of imaginative nonfiction. Not the kind where people use composite characters and invented quotes. I hate that kind of nonfiction. But imaginative in the sense that good writing and unexpected structure and vivid reporting could be combined with presenting facts.

  David Quammen

  Hate, Writing, Character

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• I'm so respectful of good writing. It's the blueprint for the movie. You have to have that script there because, if you don't, you're going to have problems. It's very important. It's also a gut instinct.

  Molly Shannon

  Writing, Important, Scripts

  Source: collider.com

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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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• I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

  Charles Kuralt

  Reading, Believe, Writing

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• I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

  Shawn Colvin

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Every actor just wants good writing.

  Jeff Daniels

  Writing, Actors, Want

  "Jeff Daniels, star of The Newsroom, on walking, talking, and not getting typecast". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2012.

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• You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Thinking, Order

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• Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Writing, Hands, Mind

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• Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.

  Sue Grafton

  Pain, Hard Work, Writing

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• Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Way, Enough

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• Good writing comes from good talent.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Writing, Talent

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1959). “Philosophical diary”

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• Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

  Meg Wolitzer

  Writing

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• Love is the main generator of all good writing... Love, passion, compassion, are all welded together.

  Carson McCullers

  Passion, Writing, Love Is

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.281, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Writing, Enemy

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• I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Thinking, Differences

  "Gchatting with George Saunders". Interview with Katherine Bernard, www.theparisreview.org. December 23, 2013.

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• Good writing is deceptive in that it hides its own artifice - it makes it seem easy.

  Michael Arndt

  Writing, Easy, Deceptive

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