Saturday, September 30, 2006

Writing Quotes

“Good writing is rewriting.” (Truman Capote)

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“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” (Gene Fowler)

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“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” (Samuel Johnson)

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“The author’s character is read from title page to end.” (Henry David Thoreau)

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“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.” (Logan Pearsall Smith)

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"When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'" (Hilaire Belloc)

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"I want to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, and so I write." (Franz Kafka)

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"A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear" (Arthur Schopenhauer)

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"The best writers make the fewest words go the longest way." (Anonymous)

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"The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write." (Ernest Gaines)

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"Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it." (Leon Trotsky)

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“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” (Jules Renard)

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“You can’t be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.” (Norman Mailer)

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“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” (Thomas Berger)

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"I write my books/novels because if I don't, I can't guarantee that anyone else will." (Neil Gaiman)

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“Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end.” (Peter De Vries)

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“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” (Mark Twain)

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"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say." (Sharon O'Brien)

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"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." (Robert Benchley)

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"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." (Thomas Mann)

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"I never make [my books]: they grow; they come to me and insist on being written." (Samuel Butler)

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"Writing only leads to more writing." (Colette)

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"Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease." (Peter Abelard)

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"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." (E.L. Doctorow)

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"Writing is the manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe." (John Gregory Dunne)

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"A book is like a quarrel: one wrod leads to another, and may erupt in blood or print, irrevocably." (Will and Ariel Durant)

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"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." (E. L. Doctorow)

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"You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure of writing." (John Updike)

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"[Writing is] the only thing that, when I'm doing it, I don't feel I should really be doing something else." (Gloria Steinem)

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"One writes to teach, to move, or to delight" (Rodolphus Agricola)

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"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing." (Kingsley Amis)

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"When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns." (Raymond Chandler)

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"Good swiping is an art in itself." (Jules Feiffer)

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"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." (W. Somerset Maugham)

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"Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders." (Walter Bagehot)

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"Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein." (Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith)

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"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." (Elmore Leonard)

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"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." (Toni Morrison)

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"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one." (Baltasar Gracian)

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"The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business." (John Steinbeck)

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and finally,

"The moment when the finished book, or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finsihed books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed." (John Updike)

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Additions...

"Of course, I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale. May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him! But I would be happy if many of them were to realize that the story of the Steppenwolf pictures a disease and crisis–but not one leading to death and destruction, on the contrary: to healing." (Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf)

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle through their pockets for vocabulary." (James D. Nicoll)




Sources used include: Quotationary by Leonard Roy Frank, Word Lovers Book of Unfamiliar Quotations by Wesley D. Camp, The New York Public Library Book of 20th Century American Quotations, 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said by Robert Byrne, and The Fifth and Far Finer Than the First Four 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said by Robert Byrne.

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