Writing Quotes - Page 7

• Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.

  Joseph Joubert

  Use, Fancy, Rooms

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• Don't use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Or they may take them figuratively - but if so, they'll also take your magics and transformations figuratively. Either way, you're in trouble.

  Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Magic, Use, May

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• Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

  Barrett Wendell

  Revision, Paragraph, Sentences

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• You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.

  Neil Gaiman

  Beach, Sky, People

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• Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Book, People, Hazards

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• I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

  Peter De Vries

  Work, Written Word, I Can

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• As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

  Mark Twain

  Doubt, Adjectives, Strikes

  Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 11

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• Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, People, Poor

  Walter Benjamin (1996). “Selected Writings: 1927-1934”, p.488, Harvard University Press

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• The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.

  Robert Bresson

  Shining, Ordinary, Brilliance

  Robert Bresson (1977). “Notes on cinematography”

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• Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

  Truman Capote

  Children, Book, Finishing It

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• One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

  Horace

  Editing, Gains, Applause

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• I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Proud

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• Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

  Louise Brooks

  Inspiration, Elimination, Brevity

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• Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Thinking, Has Beens

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Ancient Gonzo Wisdom”, p.205, Pan Macmillan

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• Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

  Anne Lamott

  Real, Caring, Light

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.225, Anchor

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• Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.

  Monica Dickens

  Love, Selfish, Land

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• Style is to forget all styles.

  Jules Renard

  Design, Style, Forget

  Jules Renard (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.45, Tin House Books

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• There is no artifice as good and desirable as simplicity.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Editing, Simplicity, Artifice

  Saint Francis de Sales, Aeterna Press (2015). “The Spiritual Maxims of Saint Francis de Sales”, Aeterna Press

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• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Attachment, History

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• Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Abandoned, Finished

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• The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Interesting, Novelists, Events

  Arthur Schopenhauer (1904). “The Art of Literature (illustrated)”, p.50, Full Moon Publications

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• Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Creating, Doe, Void

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1993). “Frankenstein”, p.3, Wordsworth Editions

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• My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.

  John D. MacDonald

  People, Purpose, Firsts

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

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• When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

  Stephen King

  Hurt, Children, Cutting

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  We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

  Ray Bradbury

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Tired

  "Zen in the Art of Writing". Book by Ray Bradbury, 1990.

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