Writing By Writers Quotes - Page 5

• Easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Powerful, Reading, Writing

  27 Copy quote

• If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

  Kingsley Amis

  Writing, Editing, Littles

  34 Copy quote

• And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.

  Arthur Plotnik

  Fire, Editing And Writing, Shows

  Arthur Plotnik (1984). “The elements of editing: a modern guide for editors and journalists”, Scribner Paper Fiction

  6 Copy quote

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• Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Athlete, Character

  43 Copy quote
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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

• The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  28 Copy quote

• Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Story Writers, Details

  19 Copy quote

• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Fleas

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

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• Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Inspiration, Writing, Long

  14 Copy quote

• I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Character, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Respect, Clever

  New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933

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• I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Successful, Interesting

  32 Copy quote

• When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

  Enrique Jardiel Poncela

  Writing, Effort, Gone

  53 Copy quote

• The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

  Russell Baker

  Real, Work, Writing

  Russell Baker (2011). “Growing Up”, p.157, RosettaBooks

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• Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

  Truman Capote

  Children, Book, Writing

  10 Copy quote

• The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.198, Grove Press

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• Every writer I know has trouble writing.

  Joseph Heller

  Writing, Young Writers, Trouble

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

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• If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

  Lillian Hellman

  Inspirational, Writing, Talking

  17 Copy quote

• Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

  John Steinbeck

  Great Writing, Writers And Writing, Whole

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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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• All the information you need can be given in dialogue.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, Confusing, Needs

  15 Copy quote

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

  17 Copy quote

• All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Matter, Story Writers

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• Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

  Richard Miller

  Wrestling, Writing, Way

  41 Copy quote

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

  7 Copy quote