Quotes About Writing

The trouble is, I'm writer, and most writers are terrible nosey parkers.

Now for me, writing the text of a short first-rate illustrated book for young children is the most difficult task of all, more difficult than a novel, short story, or full length children's book. If you find this hard to believe, I suggest you give it a try yourself.

When people charge in with great insistence that this is God's word all the while neglecting the very real humanity of these books, they can inadvertently rob these writings of their sacred power. All because of starting in the wrong place. You start with the human. You ask those questions, you enter there, you direct your energies to understanding why these people wrote these books. Because whatever divine you find in it, you find the divine through and in the human, not around it.

What's the Best Question to Ask When You're Reading the Bible? Why did people find this important to write down?...Why did people write this down? What was going on in their world that this was important to them? Why did they feel the need to put words to this? Start with that question. Start with those questions. And see what happens.

he described himself in interviews as 'hallucinating gently for a living.

That was why I resolved to write my first drafts in longhand, slowest of the various means of committing thoughts to paper, before I started doing later drafts on the typewriter; that is why I still do my first few drafts in longhand today;

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it.

writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards

Ben m'boy," Jubal said gently, "as a reporter you are hard-working and sometimes readable.

Who can possibly be as deeply inside a story as the person who writes it?

Oh, whoever thought up that nonsense about 'parting is such sweet sorrow!' " "Chap by the name of Shakespeare," I said. "But he was writing for money. Anything for a tear. Or a laugh. Either way, he got paid. He killed 'em off, at the end—and got paid for that, too." "I know he did. Made me cry. What a shameful way for a grown man to make a living!

The difference between a great writer and a minor one is fundamentally this: that the minor writer always has answers—glib answers, slick answers, memorably-worded answers, resounding and pretentious answers. The great writer dares to stand before you naked, armed only with his questions.

Aleister Crowley knew about this pragmatically, before modern neurology. He taught his pupils to learn to write equally well with both hands, thereby forcing the dormant right brain to spring to activity.

I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer . . . I am a half-fast writer.

You right," Hawk said. "Couldn't happen. Be like J. Edgar Hoover running around in a dress." "Exactly," I said. "Impossible.

When I'm stuck," Healy said, "I go over it." "All of it," Jesse said. "Start at page one of my notebook and go page by page all the way through.

Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--& by position & experience, . . . by having had my nerves shaken to excess, & by leading a life of such seclusion, . . . by these things together & by others besides, I have appeared shy & ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, . . . surely!

Writing regardless of mood, in contrast, keeps momentum going. Writing regularly, even in moderate amounts, minimizes warm-up effects. Writing in a regimen produces both ease of writing and surprising output of writing.

Writing students are notoriously conservative creatures. They write stubbornly and hopefully within the tradition of what they have read. Getting them to try out alternative or innovative forms is harder than talking them into chastity as a life style.

The beautiful part about writing is you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

So when it comes to Elvis and Joe, I have to trust my instincts, because they've gotten me here. And I have to write what I believe in, what I find moving.