Writing Quotes - Page 31

• Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

  Mark Twain

  Confusing, Easy, Crosses

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• Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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• It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.

  Will Shetterly

  Book, Firsts, Novelists

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• It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Business, Thinking, Way

  "With Hemingway". Book by Arnold Samuelson, 1984.

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• Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

  Mark Twain

  Inspiration, Scream, Old Lady

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• Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dream

  Jorge Luis Borges (1978). “Doctor Brodie's Report”, Plume Books

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• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  World, Want, Firsts

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• The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds.

  Harold Hayes

  Drama, Men, Essence

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• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.13, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Revision, Pencils, Erasers

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

  Neil Gaiman

  Lying, Stories, May

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: "Have you published anything?" - loosely translated as: I've never heard of you - and "What name do you write under?" - loosely translatable as: I've definitely never heard of you.

  Brian Stableford

  Names, People, Creative

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• Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Alive, Sacred, Breakfast Of Champions

  "Breakfast of Champions". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1973.

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• In a good play, everyone is in the right.

  Christian Friedrich Hebbel

  Play, Fiction Writing, Fiction Writers

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• In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

  Gore Vidal

  Thinking, Just Do It

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

  Edward Albee

  Truth, Reality, Opposites

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Money, Talking

  Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword

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• You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.

  Ray Bradbury

  Thinking Of You, Creativity, Creative

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• My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

  Ray Bradbury

  Letting Go, Running, Ideas

  Ray Bradbury (1980). “The Stories of Ray Bradbury”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Life, Beautiful, Work

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• Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

  Carol Burnett

  Life, Learning, Silence

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• Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Labor, Idleness

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.16, CUP Archive

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• A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Owl, Serious, May

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2301, Simon and Schuster

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• Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Drama, Life Is Short, Cutting

  Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen G. Scott (1985). “Hitchcock”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

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