Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 10

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 10 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of John Dufresne
You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to overcome these obstacles is to write your way through them. And writing always works.
- John Dufresne
Collection: Writing
Image of John Dufresne
I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.
- John Dufresne
Collection: Writing
Image of Amy Poehler
A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.
- Amy Poehler
Collection: Writing
Image of August Wilson
The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.
- August Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of August Wilson
I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.
- August Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of August Wilson
What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.
- August Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of August Wilson
There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America.
- August Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of Elizabeth Sims
Most short stories have but one plot. The very best, however, have what I call a plot-and-a-half – that is, a main plot and a small subplot that feeds in a twist or an unexpected piece of business that ads crunch and flavor to the story as a whole.
- Elizabeth Sims
Collection: Writing
Image of Elizabeth Sims
I once had an editor advise me, as I was revising one of my early novels, to add more characters. I played around with the idea. As soon as I'd decided a few fresh faces and give them something to do, I realized that what my editor had really asked for was more plot. Ding. More characters equals more action.
- Elizabeth Sims
Collection: Writing
Image of Jim Thompson
There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.
- Jim Thompson
Collection: Writing
Image of Jim Thompson
There is only one plot-things are not what they seem.
- Jim Thompson
Collection: Writing
Image of Irenaeus of Lyons
Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, in that case, to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?
- Irenaeus of Lyons
Collection: Writing
Image of Mary Roach
I very much was inspired by Bill Bryson. He does cover science, but more often, it's a mixture of science and travel, and whatever he happens to be writing about - Shakespeare, Australia, the United Kingdom, or when he covers science in 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' - he has an incredible ability to be both entertaining and enlightening.
- Mary Roach
Collection: Writing
Image of Fay Weldon
Style is what's there when you look at someone's writing and you know that they wrote it and nobody else did.
- Fay Weldon
Collection: Writing
Image of Leslie Marmon Silko
Writing cant change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.
- Leslie Marmon Silko
Collection: Writing
Image of Will Self
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.
- Will Self
Collection: Writing
Image of Lori Wilde
Somethings get easier. You get more confident in your abilities and you learn what kind of stories sell and what don't. But your standards kept going up with your skills, the business aspect of writing grows more complicated, and it becomes really hard to maintain any semblance of a balanced life the longer you're at this. No matter what level you're at, writing is always difficult.
- Lori Wilde
Collection: Writing
Image of Thomas  Moore
Some early writing say that when people kiss, they exchange the soul, that it's between their mouths and tongues that the soul is exchanged. And so the kiss is more of a soulful connection maybe than intercourse and other ways of being together. A kiss asks a lot from you. I think it asks a lot from a person to really kiss.
- Thomas Moore
Collection: Writing
Image of S.A. Bodeen
It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.
- S.A. Bodeen
Collection: Writing
Image of John Scalzi
Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different.
- John Scalzi
Collection: Writing
Image of John Scalzi
We've already established whoever is writing us is an asshole.
- John Scalzi
Collection: Writing
Image of William Safire
If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts.
- William Safire
Collection: Writing
Image of Peter De Vries
Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.
- Peter De Vries
Collection: Writing
Image of Gail Carson Levine
Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.
- Gail Carson Levine
Collection: Writing
Image of Gail Carson Levine
The Writer's Oath I promise solemnly: 1. to write as often and as much as I can, 2. to respect my writing self, and 3. to nurture the writing of others. I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.
- Gail Carson Levine
Collection: Writing
Image of Alan Garner
When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.
- Alan Garner
Collection: Writing
Image of Lisa McMann
The Thickety is a sinister, magical debut with a marvelous and shocking heroine. J.A. White’s elegant writing and masterful plot kept me turning pages late into the night.
- Lisa McMann
Collection: Writing
Image of George Saunders
I love story-writing because I can (more or less, on occasion) actually DO it. That's really the truth. I like the idea that a story is sort of a site for making cool language effects - a site for celebrating language, and, therefore, the world. And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them - I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.
- George Saunders
Collection: Writing
Image of Kate Mosse
There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers, and it is this -- the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.
- Kate Mosse
Collection: Writing
Image of Glen Cook
Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.
- Glen Cook
Collection: Writing
Image of Chazz Palminteri
The key is you have to keep doing the right thing. Do the right thing and stay around long enough, and you'll keep getting parts. And if you don't, you write your own parts, which I'm lucky to do. It's like anything else: you get hot, you get cold, then you get hot again. You just keep working.
- Chazz Palminteri
Collection: Writing
Image of Chazz Palminteri
I thought that if no one was going to give me a great part - and it was very difficult to break into film, obviously - then I'd write one myself.
- Chazz Palminteri
Collection: Writing
Image of Charles Willeford
Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor.
- Charles Willeford
Collection: Writing
Image of Lionel Shriver
In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
- Lionel Shriver
Collection: Writing
Image of Naomi Novik
All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore.
- Naomi Novik
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
All writers write about themselves, just as the old storytellers chose to tell stories that spoke to and about themselves. They call it the world, but it is themselves they portray. The world of which they write is like a mirror that reflects the inside of their hearts, often more truly than they know.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
Exercise the writing muscle every day.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Jane Yolen
Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.
- Jane Yolen
Collection: Writing
Image of Leon Uris
Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he's either naive or insane.
- Leon Uris
Collection: Writing
Image of Blaise Cendrars
I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.
- Blaise Cendrars
Collection: Writing
Image of Blaise Cendrars
Writing is a noble privilege compared with the lot of most people, who live like parts of a machine, who live only to keep the gears of society pointlessly turning.
- Blaise Cendrars
Collection: Writing
Image of Leonard Bernstein
You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.
- Leonard Bernstein
Collection: Writing
Image of Wendy Wasserstein
I thought I would write something that would make some people uncomfortable. . . . What intrigued me, I think, was the idea of women of my own generation who were successful, intelligent, coming to power and suddenly in the public arena. I started to think about what they are allowed and what they are not allowed.
- Wendy Wasserstein
Collection: Writing