Great Writers Quotes - Page 3

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

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Way

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• I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.

  Adolf Hitler

  Winning, People, Movement

  Adolf Hitler (1939). “Mein Kampf: Complete and Unabridged, Fully Annotated”

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• The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Journalism, Language, Speak

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1840). “Democracy in America”, p.112

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• The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

  George Henry Lewes

  Artist, Phrases, Use

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• I look for strong people. I don't like people who'll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that's reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought great writers and columnists to The Standard.

  Anna Wintour

  Fashion, Strong, Dad

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• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

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• Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.

  Karrine Steffans

  Wells, Good Writers, Knows

  "FEATURE: Karrine Steffans, Head of the Class". XXL Interview, www.xxlmag.com. July 13, 2009.

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• If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English.

  Elliott Colla

  Writing, Fiction, Crafts

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn’t play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.

  Stephen Vizinczey

  Fire, Play, Fingers

  Stephen Vizinczey (1988). “Truth and Lies in Literature: Essays and Reviews”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

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• Lizzy Weiss is such a great writer, and she really writes for the performances.

  Vanessa Marano

  Writing, Lizzy, Performances

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

  Walter Savage Landor

  History, May, Treats

  "Works: Indexes. Table of first lines. Imaginary conversations".

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• David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer.

  Adam McKay

  Directors, My Favorite, Filmmaker

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• Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Born, Company

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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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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• I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

  Aaron Eckhart

  Mean, Thinking, Problem

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• There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of great writers who don't get published - is it still worthwhile? Aren't we glad people are still doing it?

  Dana Spiotta

  Artist, People, World

  "Dana Spiotta on living the creative life". Interview with Jacket Copy, latimesblogs.latimes.com. August 3, 2011.

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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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• 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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• Don't be discouraged if you think you're not a great writer because terrible writers are successful in Hollywood

  David Seltzer

  Successful, Thinking, Hollywood

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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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• The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.

  John Stuart Mill

  Religious, Tolerance, Religion

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “On Liberty: Mill's Works”, p.17, VM eBooks

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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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• Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Aunt, Greatness

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928”, Chatto & Windus

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