Writing Quotes - Page 57

It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

Every author has different ways of writing and what works for one author does not necessarily work for another.

Don't write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what's in your heart.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law.

Books are the windows of the truth, but they are not the door; they point out things and yet they do not impart them. It is within that we should write, think, and speak, not merely on paper.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

I'm still suffering from shock from the last war. I was almost drafted! Luckily I was wounded while taking the physical. When I reached the psychiatrist, I said, Give me a gun, I'll wipe out the whole German Army in five minutes. He said, You're crazy! I said, Write it down!

The interesting thing about that is one of the greatest critics of socialism and leftwing writings was Robert Michels who wrote a series of essays called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" and in these essays he discusses how no matter what sorts of freedoms are advertised or put into a society structure, that all societies, all form of governments - whether they be a Roman republic, whether they be a democracy, whether they be a Russian communist system, whatever, a tribe... a tribal council - all of the continuously, throughout the ages, have all converted back into an oligarchy.

I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.

His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish.

Never write a letter and never destroy one.

Stop them damn pictures! I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures!

I am an author-illustrator of children's books - and yet - I must confess I don't do the books for the kids. When I'm working on a book I'm somewhere else - at the circus - or a rustic old farm - or deep in a forest - with no thought of who might read the book or what age group it would appeal to. I write them so I can illustrate them.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe, don't read what they write, don't ask what they believe, just observe what they do.

Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. ... It is comprehensible when I write: "The man sat on the grass," because it is clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: "The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully." The brain can't grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.