Quotes About Writing

En ook van jullie, jonge schonen, Die huiswaarts rijdt des avonds laat In koetsjes die hun driestheid tonen In onze Peterburgse straat, Wou mijn Jevgeni niets meer horen. Het feesten had hij afgezworen, Hij sloot zich op in huis, hij nam Verveeld een pen en was van plan Te schrijven - doch, hoe graag hij wilde, Nooit hield hem arbeid lang geboeid; Niets is er uit zijn pen gevloeid

it is called 'camel case' or 'intercapping' -- of writing small letters next to large in the same word, as in such popular significations as iPod, eBay, iTunes, etc. which few would argue is a distinct sign of illiteracy.

I've always admired stylists. I put the writers of bumphable, ready-to-wear prose, calculated to sell, guaranteed not to shock, in the same category as artists who can't draw. There is a lack of bravery and a lot of fraud in them. I have tried never to write a book that didn't attempt something new in the way of narrative technique. Writing is an assault on cliche. I find little to admire in writers who make no attempt at originality.

Writing, he'd come to see, was the spiritual disease of which it considered itself to be the cure;

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats…these are the facts.

I did not say alas! (nobody ever does that I know of, though the word is so frequently written).

Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without my tools I am fit for nothing.

It might seem that you shouldn't worry about what readers feel they're either going to feel what you want them to feel or not. But that way of thinking surrenders too much to chance. It leads to the erroneous idea that emotional effect is accidental. While it's true that you cannot control what each reader will feel while reading your work, what you can control is whether they will feel something in the first place and how strong those feelings will be.

We experience life as feelings. It's funny, then, that so much fiction is written to minimize feelings or leave them out altogether. It's as if emotions are not a fit subject or writing about them is too simplistic. Even fiction that celebrates feelings, romance for instance, can sometimes work with only a limited and familiar emotional palette. We can wallow in emotional content yet feel curiously empty.

An ironic, snarky, or perky tone can be used to avoid true intimacy with readers. Literary writing isn't necessarily intimate, either. A life "closely observed" doesn't mean we'll care about it.

I have a writer's concentration: intense, but flickering.

If a man write little, he had need have a great memory."[12]

My word processor has spell-check capability, which lets me add words that didn't originally come in its comprehensive dictionary. It's interesting to see what words I had to add when writing this book: feedback, throughput, overshoot, self-organization, sustainability.

I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies.

You are the best of us. We are the best of you. What becomes of us will, inevitably, become of you. That is why you should care. That is why I write. I end this chapter, then, with broken silence, broken vows, broken trust. Our secrets are yours now; I pray you use them well.

Writing about sex is not as personally revealing as one might think, because like anything else you write about, the words are not the deed. I have not done those words, I have done and felt private things for which words such as "sex" and "lust" are only poor apologies.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.

when]asked, "What should I do if I want to become a writer?" "Well," Doris said, with that steely twinkle in her dark eyes, "My best advice for you, honey, is to stop if you possibly can! And if you just can't, then get ready to work like hell. Hang onto your day job. And remember, you may not make a living, but you'll make a wonderful life.

It scares me, suddenly, to know I can't remember how home sounds. Not one bird call, nor the water over rocks. There's so much you can't save by writing down.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.