Writing Short Quotes

• You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

  Larry Niven

  Writing, Stories, Story Writers

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• A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Reading, Hero

  1905 Heretics, ch.15.

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Long, Insightful

  Letter to Harrison Blake, 16 Nov. 1857 See Pascal 1; Woodrow Wilson 25

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• 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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• And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Life, Sad, Writing

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

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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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• You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

  Jack London

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Jack London (2015). “Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer”, p.5, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Writing, Heart

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

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• Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

  J. P. Donleavy

  Writing, Worst Moments, Writing Fiction

  Quoted in Playboy, May 1979

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• Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

  Philip K. Dick

  Sorry, Writing, Fiction

  Philip K. Dick (1985). “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”, Doubleday Books

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• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

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• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

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• If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Happiness, Attitude

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Dream, Morning, Book

  "Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69". Interview with Peter H. Stone, www.theparisreview.org. 1981.

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• I was writing short films and I was going through this really, really, really terrible end of a relationship that I didn't want to be going through. It was too much for me to process and all of a sudden I had this idea for my first feature film and I knew right away I had to start writing it.

  Evan Glodell

  Writing, Ideas, Want

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

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• I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them.

  Nell Freudenberger

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  "Off the Page: Nell Freudenberger". The WashingtonPost Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. December 12, 2007.

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• I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.

  Sean Durkin

  Photography, Writing, Kids

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

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• There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

  Tobias Wolff

  Writing, Joy, Stories

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• I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.

  Wole Soyinka

  Art, Writing, School

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Jan 02, 2015

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• I think I'm someone who can prattle on a long time about something, which serves me well as a novelist, but it's the enemy when I'm writing short stories.

  Maggie Shipstead

  Writing, Thinking, Long

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Garden, Stories

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• If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other, creating a complete landscape that I treasure. The green foliage of the trees casts a pleasant shade over the earth, and the wind rustles the leaves, which are sometimes dyed a brilliant gold. Meanwhile, in the garden, buds appear on the flowers, and colorful petals attract bees and butterflies, reminding us of the subtle transition from one season to the next.

  Haruki Murakami

  Flower, Butterfly, Writing

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