Great Writers Quotes - Page 2

• There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.

  Lucas Neff

  Tv Shows, Trying, Roles

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• The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  Stephen King

  Movie, Writing, Sisterhood

  FaceBook post by Stephen King from Feb 06, 2013

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• Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Writing, Reading Literature

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.

  Jean Rostand

  Book, Science, Men

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• Maybe it’s not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, too—some sort of virtues—but we don’t care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because they’re good. We care about them because they’re not admirable, because they’re us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it.

  Michael Cunningham

  Heart, Sorrow, Needs

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• I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

  Dorothy Parker

  Writing, Revision, Seven

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.

  Pat Conroy

  Queens, Moving, Black

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• And I love Jane Austen's use of language too--the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom in my mind. Beethoven does the same thing with his cadence and phrasing and structure. It's a fact: Jane Austen is musical. And so's Yeats. And Wordsworth. All the great writers are musical.

  Andrew Clements

  Clever, Giving, Musical

  Andrew Clements (2008). “Things Hoped For”, p.77, Penguin

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• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

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• hay he's a great writer and i like him a lot

  Jeff Kinney

  Hay, I Like Him

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• Sometimes you read a passage by a great writer, and you know what he says and how he says it will always be, for you, the only possible way it could be. Less often a painter will describe an event in a way that fits into your interpretation of that event so perfectly that it becomes the event itself.

  Vincent Price

  Events, Way, Sometimes

  Vincent Price (2016). “I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography”, p.142, Open Road Media

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• I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

  Anne Lamott

  Hate, Writing, Thinking

  "Bird by Bird". Book by Anne Lamott, 1994.

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• Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.

  Lynne Tillman

  People, Mysterious, Ghost

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• Jesse Joyce is a great writer.

  Dave Attell

  Joyce

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• Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at things.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Way

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• But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.

  Fay Godwin

  Photography, Country, Avid

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• My family is involved and my wife Brenda is a great, great writer. She helps me with the writing of everything and also sings with me. I owe a lot to Brenda.

  Rick Derringer

  Writing, Wife, Helping

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• I really enjoy English and poetry and writing classes. You do get writer's block when you're writing music, and having inspiration from other great writers is great. You have to look for inspiration because sometimes music isn't the only thing that you can look at.

  Taylor Momsen

  Block, Inspiration, Writing

  www.seventeen.com. January 27, 2010.

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• Unless a writer lives with a periodic delusion of his greatness, he will not continue writing. He must believe, against all reason and evidence, that the public will experience a catastrophic loss if he does not complete his novel. The public is just clamoring to give him his fame. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

  Leonard Bishop

  Powerful, Believe, Book

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• At difficult times of my life, books have been an incredible comfort. When I was 12, I changed schools and my parents split up. It was then that I became addicted to reading. A great writer can attach themselves to your mind and heart, and you feel you understand the world better. As long as you have the capacity to read, you needn't be alone any more. I remember thinking as a child, "If I could give one person the comfort I keep getting from books, then I want to write."

  Elliot Perlman

  Art, Children, Motivation

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• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

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• From Finding the Center to Reading and Writing: A Personal Account, the story remains the same: in a journey unique to myself, I left my worthless home, with its small people, and I sailed against the tides of chance and history looking for a better place -- for the center -- where I suffered greatly and made myself into a great writer.

  Caryl Phillips

  Reading, Home, Writing

  Caryl Phillips (2010). “A New World Order”, p.192, Random House

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• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

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• I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various

  Irwin Shaw

  Style, Sticks, Stuck

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• I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

  Roald Dahl

  Hate, Book, Reading

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