Writing Quotes - Page 19

• Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

  William Faulkner

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• All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Criminals, Horrible, Feels

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• The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Ignorance, Editors, Rejection

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• Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve a problem.

  Raymond Chandler

  Struggle, Suspense, Detectives

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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• Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Labels, World

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• To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Crafts, Difficult, Be Good

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• All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stolen

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• Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

  James A. Baldwin

  Editors, Literature, World

  "Notes of a Native Son". Book by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. 1955.

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• The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

  James A. Baldwin

  Greed, Needs, Literature

  1961 Nobody Knows My Name,'Alas, Poor Richard'.

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• The best children's book writers are not people who have kids, but people who write from the child within themselves.

  Andrea Brown

  Children, Book, Kids

  "The World Doesn't Need Another Rhyming Tooth Fairy Story: A Conversation with Children's Book Agent Andrea Brown". Interview with Anna Olswanger, www.underdown.org. 1998.

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• Good writing is rewriting.

  Truman Capote

  Rewriting, Good Writing

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• The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

  Sydney Smith

  Mistake, Dinner, Scandal

  Sydney Smith (1848). “The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith: Three Volumes Complete in One”, p.343

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• I write of the wish that comes true--for some reason, a terrifying thought.

  James M. Cain

  Wish, Reason

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• Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

  Wallace Stegner

  Practice, Skills, Knack

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• Great writers are the saints for the godless.

  Anita Brookner

  God, Saint, Bedtime

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• Write from the soul, not from some notion what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal.

  Jeffrey Carver

  Thinking, Soul, Fickle

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• Never throw up on an editor.

  Ellen Datlow

  Editors

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• For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.

  A. A. Milne

  Editing, Long, Brain

  Winnie-the-Pooh ch. 4 (1926)

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• Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

  Samuel Johnson

  Faults

  Samuel Johnson, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay (1854). “Lives of the most eminent English poets: with critical observations on their works”, p.223

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• A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

  Dylan Thomas

  Art, Creativity, Reality

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (1992). “On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

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• As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

  Stephen King

  Art, Fun, Practice

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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• Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

  Oscar Wilde

  Sweet, Real, Creativity

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.22, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• you must not come lightly to the blank page.

  Stephen King

  Pages, Blank Pages, Blank

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.

  William Carlos Williams

  Thinking, Disease

  Quoted in Newsweek, 7 Jan 1957.

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• You can fix anything but a blank page.

  Nora Roberts

  Pages, Blank Pages, Blank

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