Quotes about writing
writing people stupidity
This is what i find most encouraging about the writing trades: they allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane. Kurt Vonnegut
writing opportunity palm-sunday
I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.
writing symphony waiting
I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well -- he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.
writing eye purpose
There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it: What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.
writing depressive
I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.
writing dancer competition
Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too....
writing people dumb
I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
writing matter way
Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns
writing fiction each-day
The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.
writing style
You develop a style from writing a lot.
writing thinking our-society
It's only recently that I've come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all our thinking for us, that we are writing myths and our myths are believed, and that old myths are believed until someone writes a new one.
writing trade sane
This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
writing thinking people
Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?
writing alive sacred
Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.
writing thinking wells
If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.
writing stories done
Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.
writing thinking feelings
I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.
writing stories radio
Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
writing opportunity culture
We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
writing interesting revelations
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.
writing editors rejection
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
writing should-have giving
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
writing ideas scratches
Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
writing character glasses
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.
writing pneumonia making-love
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
writing college creative
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
writing conditions
I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write. Barbara Tuchman
writing sentences satisfying
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
writing evil water
People’s good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass. William Shakespeare
writing eye men
No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth
writing stories sitting
I always write a story in one sitting. Katherine Anne Porter
writing demand doe
Writing does not exclude the full life; it demands it.
writing goal grace
If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.