Writing Quotes - Page 48

I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.

History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.

As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.

Furiously and gorgeously write your ass off.

Whether or not you write well, write bravely.

To write does not mean to convert the real into words but to make the power of the word real.

I stopped dying the moment I started writing

Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.

I've never known a writer who didn't feel ill at ease in the world. We all feel unhoused in some sense. That's part of why we write. We feel we don't fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we're not of it. You don't need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world.

I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable

Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.

Writing a poem is a lesson in the truest empathy. And to truly have empathy is to truly know power, or at least the only kind of power I’m interested in.

All I knew was that I was writing something out of my very guts, and that I was content.

No one should ever have to read a sentence twice because of the way it is put together.

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.

If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages.

Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.

Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You just can't will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it.

However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.

When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

You've got to write badly. If you write badly at least you've got something to rewrite. If you're scared to write badly, then you've got nothing.

If you're a voracious reader and you write something that you want to read, odds are other people will want to read it, too.