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QUOTES
ABOUT WRITING
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Okay, I admit it.
Lots of times I don't want to write, even (or
especially) when I know I must - like to make a deadline. Sometimes I
can't think of a single thing to say, and sometimes I feel like I'm the
only writer in the world suffering the dreaded disease of "writers
block." Then there are those days when I feel like everyone in the
writing world is conspiring against me and my success. And on a really
bad day, I'm just convinced that all the words I spew across the pages
are the worst jumbles of uninteresting prose to cross my screen. When
I'm feeling particularly unwriterlike, I usually turn to my favorite
quotes for inspiration.
"Don’t
write what you
know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your
readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and
your
readers will catch fire at your words." ---Valerie Sherwood
"Close
the door. Write
with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to
figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you
have to
say.
It's the one and only thing you have to offer." --- Barbara
Kingsolver
"Art
is a microscope
which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul and
shows to people these secrets which are common to all." --- Leo Tolstoy
"Art is a moral
passion
married to entertainment. Moral passion without
entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is
television." --- Rita Mae Brown
"Fiction
is the lie
through which we tell the truth. --- Albert Camus
If
the reader doesn't
understand what you're saying,
you're talking to
yourself. --- Nigel Hamilton
"What
moves men of
genius, or rather what inspires their work,
is not new
ideas, but their obsession with the idea
that what has already been
said is
still not enough." --- Eugčne Delacroix
"Writing
from the heart requires vision, and vision is beyond skill. Vision
writers write what they want to write. This means they write about
things that have moved them deeply. Such writing is not something that
you can learn. For vision is a gift. But if you open your heart wide,
the gift will be great." --- Cyn-Young Ahn
"There's one thing
your
writing must have to be any good at all. It must have
you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you
must be on
that page. In the end, you can't make the magic happen for your reader.
You can
only allow the miracle of 'being one with' to take place. So dare to be
yourself. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you
are,
everything else will fall into place." --- Elizabeth Ayres
"One
hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing
into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing
has to
be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and
psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating." --- Niyi Osundare
"People
on the outside think there's something magical about
writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and
come
down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in
back of
the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it."
--- Harlan Ellison
"We
are a species that needs and wants to understand who we
are.
Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing,
which is one reason
why they
write so little."
--- Anne Lamott
"The
artist is a
receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place:
from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper,
from a passing
shape, from
a spider's web."
--- Pablo Picasso
"Each man has
his own way. After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter,
away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments,
while you're walking or shaving or playing a game or whatever, or even
talking to someone you're not vitally interested in. You're working,
your mind is working, on this problem in the back of your head ...
What's an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up
to the cosmos; . . . why do ideas, why do great scientific discoveries
often occur in different parts of the world at the same time? The same
is true of the elements that go to make up a poem or a great novel or
any work of art. They are already in the air, they have not been given
voice, that's all. They need the man, the interpreter, to bring them
forth." --- Henry Miller
"I have always
felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend- to make flights,
carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage,
even a certain conceit. " --- E.B. White
"Readers, after all,
are making the world with you. You give them the materials,
but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds." ---
Ursula Le Guin
"If you’re going to be
a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not
wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You
have to
turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow." --- Louis L’Amour
"Writing
energy is like
anything else:
The more you put in, the more you get
out."
--- Richard Reeves
"Get
up from your desk
and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer
one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed
at desk
level." --- Jane Yolen
"Our bodies are
garbage
heaps: we collect experience, and from the
decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee
grinds, and
old steak bones out of our minds, come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile
soil.
Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not
come
all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic
details
of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive
thoughts
to the solid ground of black soil." --- Natalie Goldberg
"I started out with
nothing in the world but a kind of passion, a driving desire. I don't
know where it came from, and I do not know why-or why I have been so
stubborn about it that nothing could deflect me. But this thing between
me and my writing is the strongest bond I have ever had-stronger than
any bond or any engagement with any human being or with any other work
I've ever done." --- Katherine
Anne Porter
"Undoubtedly, we
become what we envisage."
--- Claude
M. Bristol
"Take
chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure."
--- Natalie
Goldberg
"One of the marks
of a gift is to have the courage of it."
--- Katherine Anne Porter
"To live a creative
life, we must lost our fear of being wrong."
--- Joseph Chilton Pearce
"Successful writers
are not the ones who write the best sentences. They
are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is
most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and
keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties." ---
Bonnie Friedman
"It always comes
back to the same necessity:
go deep enough and
there is a bedrock of truth, however hard." --- May Sarton
"One extends one's
limits only by exceeding them." --- M. Scott Peck
"It's a reactive
thing, like a Geiger counter; you click whenever you
come close to whatever you were built to do." --- Stephen King
"There are only
three colors, ten digits, and seven notes;
its what we
do with
them that's important." --- Ruth
Ross
"You've got to be
smart enough to write and stupid enough to not think
about all the things that might go wrong." --- Sara Gilbert
"Nobody cares much
whether you write or not. You just have to do it."
--- Natalie Goldberg
"How do I
know what I think until I see what I say?"
--- E.M. Forster
"Opportunity exists
in the air for just a few minutes. If you don’t
obey your gut feeling right away, you’ve lost your chance." ---
Ken Lakuta
"Every time you
don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of
energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness." --- Shakti Gawain
"We conquer,
not in any brilliant fashion, we conquer by
continuing."
--- George Matheson
"The successful
person is the individual who forms the habit of doing
what the failing person doesn’t like to do." --- Donald Riggs
"Motivation is what
gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."
--- Jim Ryun
"If you wish
to be a writer, write."
--- Epictetus
"Everyone has
talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent
to the dark place where it leads." --- Erica Jong
"I merely took the
energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues."
--- Duke Ellington
''A bit of advice given to a young Native
American at the time of his initiation: 'As you go the way of life, you
will see a great chasm.
Jump. It’s not as wide as you think.'"
--- Joseph
Campbell
"God sells us all
things at the price of the labor."
--- Leonardo da Vinci
"It is never too
late to be what you might have been."
--- George Elliot
"Write what
disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing
to speak about. Be willing to be split open." --- Natalie Goldberg
"All writers are
discontent. That's because they're aware of a
potential and believe they're not reaching it." --- William Saroyan
"You have to
write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's
going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for
children."
--- Madeleine L'Engle
"And above all,
watch with glittering eyes the whole world around
you because the
greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely
places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
--- Roald Dahl
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