Writing Quotes - Page 32

• Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

  Joseph Joubert

  Powerful, Never Giving Up, Doe

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• If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

  J. B. Priestley

  Odds, Challenges, Genius

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• Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Mother, Children, Moving

  "Exploring the Edge of the Fantasy Map: PW Talks with Patrick Rothfuss". Interview with Paul Goat Allen, www.publishersweekly.com. January 31, 2011.

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• I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

  Carl Sandburg

  Style, Literature, Way

  Carl Sandburg, Margaret Sandburg, George Hendrick (1999). “Ever the Winds of Chance”, p.138, University of Illinois Press

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• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Education

  Mark Twain (2015). “The Prince and the Pauper (StoneHenge Classics)”, p.154, StoneHenge Classics

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• Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

  John Updike

  Success, Decay, May

  John Updike's acceptance speech for Edward MacDowell Medal, as quoted in New York Times, August 26, 1981.

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• When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.

  Tennessee Williams

  Alive, Posthumous

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• I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

  C. S. Lewis

  Book, Made, Given

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• . . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.

  Kim Addonizio

  Artist, Maps, Obsession

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• What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.

  Noel Coward

  Rain, Bored, Professionalism

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• I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

  Anne Frank

  Inspirational, Lying, Heart

  Anne Frank, General Press (2016). “The Diary of a Young Girl”, p.13, GENERAL PRESS

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• Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

  Dr. Seuss

  Country, Children, Book

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• Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Dark, Creating, Giving

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.10

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• Writing wasn't easy to start. After I finally did it, I realized it was the most direct contact possible with the part of myself I thought I had lost, and which I constantly find new things from. Writing also includes the possibility of living many lives as well as living in any time or world possible. I can satisfy my enthusiasm for research, but jump like a calf outside the strict boundaries of science. I can speak about things that are important to me and somebody listens. It's wonderful!

  Virpi Hameen-Anttila

  Important, Research, World

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• I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Thinking, Questions And Answers, Questioning

  "An Enchanted Life: An Adept's Guide to Masterful Magick". Book by Patricia Telesco, November 1, 2001.

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• Don't take life so serious. It ain't no-hows permanent.

  Walt Kelly

  Life, Serious, Permanent

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• The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

  Elias Canetti

  Night, Literature, Infinite

  "Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations)". Book by M.P. Singh, p. 302, January 1, 2005.

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• The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing.

  Ken MacLeod

  Secret, Becoming

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• I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

  Ray Bradbury

  Ideas, Design, Needs

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• When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

  Margaret Laurence

  Mean Girls, Jobs, Odd

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• The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John Y. Campbell

  Home, Simple, Editors

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• Observe, don't imitate.

  John M. Ford

  George H. Scithers, Darrell Schweitzer, Isaac Asimov, John M. Ford (1981). “On Writing Science Fiction: The Editors Strike Back”, p.13, Wildside Press LLC

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• Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

  Anne Enright

  Thinking, Good Writing

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

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• There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Rewriting, Great Writing, Great Writers

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• Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fashion, Mind, Age

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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