Writing Fiction Quotes - Page 2

• 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

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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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• Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

  Alice Munro

  Writing, People, Anecdotes

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Sep 17, 2011

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• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

  Woody Allen

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  "Shakespeare, Woody Allen And A Certain Qantas A380" by Christine Negroni, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 23, 2012.

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• Easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Powerful, Reading, Writing

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• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

  Winston Churchill

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  Winston Churchill (1965). “Winston Churchill, His Wit and Wisdom: Selections from His Works and Speeches”

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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

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• Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Inspiration, Mean, Writing

  "Trading Stories" by Jhumpa Lahiri, www.newyorker.com. June 13&20, 2011.

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• I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Funny Life, Writing, Sound

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• There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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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

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• You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.

  John Waters

  Motivational, Stupid, Book

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• The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

  Julie Powell

  Writing, Sisterhood, Skulls

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• Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Creativity, People

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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.

  Denison Witmer

  Writing, Space, Understanding

  Source: sojo.net

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• Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

  Buddy Ebsen

  Writing, Long, Fiction

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

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• About a year after (my stories began being published), magazine editor George Scithers, suggested to me that since I was so new at being published, I must be very close to what I had to learn to move from fooling around with writing to actually producing professional stories. There are a lot of aspiring writers out there who would like to know just that. Write that book.SFWW-I is that book. It's the book I was looking for when I first started writing fiction.

  Barry B. Longyear

  Moving, Book, Writing

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• Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

  John Updike

  Writing, Sea, Sailing

  Hugging the Shore foreword (1984)

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• I didn't lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.

  Matt Groening

  Lying, Writing, Fiction

  "Fictional Character: Homer Simpson". "In a way, they're all winners: 10 Simpsons episodes from the past 5 seasons that stand among the series' best" by Steve Heisler, Kyle Ryan, and Genevieve Koski, www.avclub.com. March 23, 2009.

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• Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Lying, Writing, Fiction

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• Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

  Stephen King

  Lonely, Jobs, Ocean

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

  Jennifer Haigh

  Reading, Writing, Practice

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• I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Fiction, Uncomfortable

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

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