Writing Quotes - Page 1064

I will always be an artist first. I see my writing as an extension of my illustrating.

I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.

I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo.

I cherish the review-as-literature; as lapidary journalism in the eighteenth-century mode, the last hard sparkling diamond in theessayists's tarnished crown. To me, writing a good review is not just a way to make extra money, but a sacred duty.

As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the blood can sometimes reach it by going first through the head and what is wrong in the blood can sometimes be tempered by the head.

It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.

When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to you and everybody else and for me this is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times.

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Once I hit 25, I realized I had to do more than just be an actor. I love acting, but there's something that makes it difficult to just be a man, a grownup. Not to take away from any actors, but I knew I wasn't going to be Tom Cruise. I knew I was a character actor, which is great and I'm proud of it. But I knew that I wanted to do more. I started producing and directing and writing and stuff for the theater, and then that grew out of hand and I sort of lost my control. I've always loved the process of filmmaking. Now I'm much more into producing docs, but I want to direct features.

For me, writing clarifies things. It gives meaning, and it makes me see the connections.

Ruth's writing is so joyful, funny and uplifting; it's always a real treat of a read.