Quotes about writing
writing adventure young-friends
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure. George Santayana
writing-history needs historian
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
writing people political
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened. George Orwell
writing good-writing thrive
Good writing is like a windowpane.
writing effort leaving
By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.
writing window-panes should
Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
writing successful artist
Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.
writing people frightened
Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.
writing political-language trying
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
writing trying remember
I don't remember a lot of what I write. I try to release it after it's out there so that I can be fresh again. George Meyer
writing reality balls
Experience as much as you can and absorb a lot of reality. Otherwise, your writing will have the force of a Wiffle ball.
writing ministers crosses
Ministers never write or preach so well as when under the cross. George Whitefield
writing joy nails
Invariably, it is this for which I write: the joy ... of an argument firmly made, like a nail straightly driven, its head flush to the plank. George Will
writing hints compliment
Semicolons . . . signal, rather than shout, a relationship. . . . A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."
writing people political
Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.
writing people literature
When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written. George Saintsbury
writing men thinking
We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire.
writing cutting liberty
We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids ... George Sand
writing obsession violent
The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.
writing passion tasks
I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.
writing effort important
I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense of what Herculean effort went into writing page 23, no pretensions as to why the dull patch on page 4 is important for the fireworks that will happen on page 714. George Saunders
writing given aspiration
I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.
writing trying fiction
The one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull - to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.
writing normal energetic
I've always wanted to write energetic, atypical sentences, i.e., sentences that were not normal or bland.
writing doe looks
That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."
writing ideas challenges
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.
writing thinking remember
Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.
writing have-faith tobias
As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both share an easy, capacious confidence that says he has faith in his readers.
writing needs produce
When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.
writing people sloth
The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.
writing years stories
I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.
writing thinking differences
I think that's one of the maybe under-discussed aspects of process - the difference between a good writing day and a bad one is the quality of the split-second decisions you made.
writing interesting political
Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.