Famous Quotes & Sayings

Brandon Sanderson

I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them.

Barbara Mertz

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

Brian Aldiss

A writer should say to himself, not, How can I get more money?, but How can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?

Brenda Ueland

the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

Jane Hirshfield

The writing of an assay-type poem or a poem investigating perspective isn't an exercise of rational or strategic mind. Poems for me are acts of small or large desperation. They grapple with surfaces too steep to walk in any other way, yet which have to be traveled.

Jami Attenberg

I wish I could write while I'm on the road but it never works for me. I need to be sitting still.

Jami Attenberg

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

Anton Chekhov

Write only of what is important and eternal.

Anton Chekhov

If an intelligent, educated, and healthy man begins to complain of his lot and go down-hill, there is nothing for him to do but to go on down until he reaches the bottom--there is no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that.

Brandon Routh

Superman is there to unite us all, I think. I'm proud of Bryan for respecting that and not making it just about us.

Bailee Madison

I was trying to get into the business from a young age, but I don't think I really realized how much I loved it until I booked my first movie and found myself in New Zealand for six months filming Bridge to Terabithia.

Ashton Eaton

I think a challenge for myself is to see how many times I can get above 9,000. That would be a good challenge.

Azar Nafisi

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.

Azar Nafisi

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

Ayn Rand

Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?

Bertrand Russell

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

Jane Goodall

Every stage of my life set the scene for the next, and at each point all I had to do was say "yes" and not think too much about the consequences.

Jane Goodall

Your life matters. You can't live through a day without making an impact on the world. And what's most important is to think about the impact of your actions on the world around you.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Flannery O'Connor

The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

Ken Auletta

Always point your finger at the chest of the person with whom you are being photographed. You will appear dynamic. And no photo editor can crop you from the picture.

Len Wein

I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.