Quotes about writing
writing stories invisible
It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. Elmore Leonard
writing thinking years
After 58 years you'd think writing would get easier. It doesn't. If you're lucky, you become harder to please. That's all right, it's still a pleasure.
writing trying reader
I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
writing bucks posterity
I'm not going to write for posterity. I'm going to write to make a buck.
writing sound
Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
writing narrative jazz
I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.
writing important sound
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
writing exclamation-points two
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
writing needs information
All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
writing people trying
Try not to write the parts that people skip.
writing good-day four
I used to be able to write five pages a day, every day, no problem. Now a good day is five or four pages, and that's from 9:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.
writing sin adverbs
Using adverbs is a mortal sin.
writing inspire sound
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
writing want reader
I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
writing may narrative
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.
writing advice important
My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
writing people different
I had to introduce a lot of people into my writing environment which I thought at first I would find really difficult, but I actually found that I loved it. It meant that I was meeting different people; it meant that I was expressing myself in different ways. Ella Henderson
writing emotion certain
Words are impotent to describe certain emotions. Ella Maillart
writing able
I've never been able to write for stand-up. Elayne Boosler
writing attractive-things difficult
Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write. Edward St Aubyn
writing want favour
I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.
writing men wife
If you are a married man resident in Cuba, you cannot get a passport to go to the next town without your wife's permission in writing. Edward Burnett Tylor
writing humiliation
To write is a humiliation. Edward Dahlberg
writing evil sin
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
writing men luck
What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
writing painter
A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.
writing farming scruples
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.
writing giving
When I'm talking to somebody, I'll put a piece of paper on the table and I'll write what I call a conversation summary - notes about the conversation on the piece of paper. At the end of the conversation, I'll take a picture on my phone and give the other person the original piece of paper. Edward Boyden
writing play mad
I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me. Edward Bond
writing play down-and
It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play
writing negativity shapes
I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.
writing thinking
I usually think about a play anywhere from six months to a year and a half before I sit down to write it out. Edward Albee
writing people together
About four years ago I made a list, for my own amusement, of the playwrights, the contemporary playwrights, by whom critics said I'd been influenced. I listed twenty-five. It included five playwrights whose work I didn't know, so I read these five playwrights and indeed now I suppose I can say I have been influenced by them. The problem is that the people who write these articles find the inevitable similarities of people writing in the same generation, in the same century, and on the same planet, and they put them together in a group.