Writing Quotes - Page 7

I shall not be deterred by people who don't see where the future of Africa lies. It is the short-sighted people who put their opinions in writing. They don't understand that the future of all countries lies in processing.

If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.

Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free.

A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well.

I don't blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then I don't know if any one would believe anything good of me anyway.

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

If you want to give the devil a message, write it on the bottom of your shoes.

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.

It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends.

To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention.

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.

I've just always been a reader. My grandmother just expressed the importance of literacy, if I said that correctly. She just always expressed the importance of being able to write and being able to read.

She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint.

It makes me boil when I think of the power we profess and the utter impotency of our action. Believers who know one-tenth as much as we do are doing one-hundred times more for God, with His blessing and our criticism. Oh if I could write it, preach it, say it, paint it, anything at all, if only God's power would become known among us.

I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.