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Quotes About Writing

I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.
~ Gertrude Stein
I write for myself and strangers.
~ Gertrude Stein
Remarks are not literature.
~ Gertrude Stein
What is a sentence. A sentence is left to be alright and therefor (sic) they are barely here. A day is additional with there having been with a condition of remaining all day which it is partly that they like to look about made it for them in reference as they knew that is whenever they met by the arrangement which had been made for them in the mean time. What is a sentence. They need not be having them made by them. in 'Sentences' chapter, p. 175 my edition, How to Write.
~ Gertrude Stein
The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.
~ Gertrude Stein
I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.
~ Gertrude Stein
One of the pleasantest things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.
~ Gertrude Stein
I take back all the harsh things I said about your writing. It makes a picture and that is always good. But it is alright to learn to play Bach in writing too.
~ Gertrude Stein
After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.
~ Gertrude Stein
Oh grammar is so fine.
~ Gertrude Stein
little clippings from my
~ Gervase Phinn
I really didn't write it with any intention of being published. If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have written something more sensible, because now I have to dress up as a pirate for book signings... I would have done a novel about a man who hangs around with a gaggle of models.
~ Gideon Defoe
It's a lot harder for an author that's unpublished to say, 'Hey, here's a new book.' There's nothing of theirs to read, so you don't know what it's going to be like. Kickstarter is great, but you also have to put your work out there whenever you can so you can build a reputation.
~ Ryan North
My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.
~ Clive Cussler
I tend to have a lot of songs ready for each record I do anyway. I always have. I was thinking, the more you write, the better chance you're going to come up with a collection of stuff that is going to work together.
~ Beth Hart
I mean, I knew that one day I'd do something writing-oriented as soon as I started writing. But when I started singing, I was determined to make those two work together, so I just worked at it until I started making stuff that sounded like music.
~ Alison Sudol
I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.
~ Greta Gerwig
Once upon a time, I was a workaholic clocking more than 80 hours per week. That changed after I began to write. I now work only around 35 hours per week. I do not work on weekends because these are the days that I use for research as well as for my writing.
~ Ashwin Sanghi
I've worked so hard for so long, and everyone's reaction has made me feel like... almost like they trust me, which is just a wonderful feeling. It pushes me to write things better and better.
~ Jack Antonoff
We got kind of into a rhythm at 'Parks' because there were so many characters that we had an A story, a B story, and a C story just about every episode. So by the middle of that show's run, we always had three stories, and it worked really well.
~ Alan Yang
All I do when I write scripts is think about food: 'Have I worked long enough to justify a walk to the kitchen?'
~ Nora Ephron
I'd been in Hollywood for five years before I started writing 'The Guild.' I worked enough to pay all my bills. So I was very lucky in that respect. Most people don't make a living acting.
~ Felicia Day
I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
~ Mona Simpson
To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.
~ Carl Hiaasen