Quotes About Writing

Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live, am unable to live. All life, to me, is a search for the balanced diet, which does not exist. For me. Alas, I am twenty-nine, and I cannot stand more than five days of the life I have invented as the most ideal. May 17, 1950

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

I continued up the stairs, this time on wings, suspecting for the first time that Louisa's book might outlive us all.

Whenever there's something wrong with your writing, suspect that there's something wrong with your thinking.

If the good news from cyberspace is that we're writing more, the bad news is that most of us aren't very good at it. Our words don't do justice to our ideas.

First, you need something to organize: ideas, material, scraps of expertise, recipes, prognostications, anecdotes, scurrilous gossip, anything that might be relevant to what you want to write. And you get this stuff by hoarding it, by faithfully making notes and squirreling them away.

An idea in your head is merely an idle notion. But an idea written down, that's the beginning of something! Stripped down to its briefs, a piece of writing is nothing more than a handful of ideas, put into words and arranged to do a job. We all get ideas—try not thinking in the shower. The trick is to write them down.

Contrary to popular opinion, there's no mystery to writing well. It's a skill that just about anyone can learn, more craft than art.

I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyze the facts after writing them down. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts it: "A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

So I banish about ninety per cent of my worries by taking these four steps: Writing down precisely what I am worrying about. Writing down what I can do about it. Deciding what to do. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.

Writing down precisely what I am worrying about. Writing down what I can do about it. Deciding what to do. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.

Brood over your topic until it becomes mellow and expansive...then put all these ideas down in writing, just a few words, enough to fix the idea...put them down on scraps of paper—you will find it easier to arrange and organize these loose bits when you come to set your material in order.

If the author doesn't like people," he said, "people won't like his or her stories.

It is my contention that the population in general and male literary critics in particular entertain a negative image of women and their words, to the extent that it is widely believed that you don't have to read women's writing to know it's no good!

So central, however, is reading to feminist reality that it is not unusual to find women acknowledging that a particular book changed my life; and so central is writing to feminist experience that it is not unusual to find a feminist defined as a woman who writes.

Women who want to get rid of the belief that women writers are deficient might be better advised to challenge those who are doing the disqualifying, rather than to insist that they are not women, but human.

There were some, naturally, who would understand, and he wrote for them, or for himself. Anyhow, some idealised reader who would accept everything, and forgive.

Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.

Yo no he escrito un libro sobre verdades y mentiras. Simplemente, un libro que ha despertado la curiosidad de la gente en el pasado

Authors. Even the sane one are nuts. - Da Vinci Code

Tidak ada yang lebih dihargai oleh penulis daripada pujian. Robert Langdon

La historia será amable conmigo, porque tengo intención de escribirla.

It's very hard — weirdly hard — to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down and write and find that place where you're just involved and enjoying the imaginary place you've discovered. All the other "problems" with writing are just puzzles, and they can be interesting to try to crack, even when it's frustrating.