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.

Arthur Miller

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

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.

Ben Fountain

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

Ben Folds

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you thats the center of it, that is it. Its almost like theres something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if youre a songwriter that sings your material.

Carl Sandburg

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

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.

Brian Selznick

I think the most important thing you can do is to keep drawing no matter what. And to not be afraid of drawing whatever interests you. If there is something that you want to draw, to make, then I think you should pursue it and not let anybody tell you that you cant do it.

Brian Tracy

The tragedy is that everyone thinks they already have goals. But what they really have are hopes and wishes.

Amanda Hocking

I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.

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.