Writing Quotes - Page 17

• When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.

  William Faulkner

  Running, Horse, Giving

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• I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Powerful, Spring, Night

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

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• No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Money, Work

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 5 Apr. 1776)

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• I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving Up, Hard Work, Two

  "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles". Interview with Herbert Mitgang, archive.nytimes.com. April 22, 1984.

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• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Editing, Crafts

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

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• You can make anything by writing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Kids, Storytelling

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• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, May, Way

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

  David Sedaris

  Giving, People, Illusion Of Control

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• Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Editing, Mind, Sides

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• Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

  John Ruskin

  Reader, Skip, Productivity

  "A Joy for Ever". Book by John Ruskin, note 6, 1857.

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• The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

  William Styron

  Age, Neurosis, Young Writers

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Rewrite formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

  Stephen King

  Formulas

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• Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.

  Dorianne Laux

  Reading, Voice, Choices

  Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.116, W. W. Norton & Company

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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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• I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

  Mark Twain

  Time, Long, Letters

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• I could not think without writing.

  Jean Piaget

  Thinking

  Richard Isadore Evans, Jean Piaget (1973). “Dialogue with Jean Piaget”, Praeger Publishers

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• Dialogue is a necessary evil.

  Fred Zinnemann

  Evil, Necessary Evil, Dialogue

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• With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

  James Thurber

  Birthday, Sarcastic, Faces

  1955 In the New York Post, 30 Jun.

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• The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

  William Butler Yeats

  Christian, Passion, Heart

  William Butler Yeats (1955). “Letters”

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• I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Money, Epic, Taste

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967”, p.106, Ballantine Books

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• The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

  Barbara Mertz

  Way

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• Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Good Day, Two, Numbers

  Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.11, Melville House

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• The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Reading, Creativity

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• I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Witty, Humorous

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• You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Ends, Dies

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