Writing Quotes - Page 282

You can never know too much about writing. If you think you know everything, you're not leaving yourself open to learn. . . . The best writers are always learning, exploring, and trying to improve.

I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.

I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.

The ultimate 20-year plan is to be living in the Caribbean, writing, living off the land, eating from the ocean and probably smoking herb.

It’s a fair-sized job to write a book that people can be bothered just to read; when they begin to steal copies, you are really getting some place.

All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other peoples backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.

Mbeki began to write a study of the workings of apartheid policy in the reserves - the areas set aside in law for African occupation - as early as 1959 and 1960.

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs'.

With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one's reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write.

Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.

But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

Writing about dead white males seems to be out of favor among academics.

Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

If any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny or rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there should be no commanders or officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no master or officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments - I say I never denied that in such cases, the commander may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits.

I'd love to be able to write an in-depth piece of what causes men like [Richard] Nixon and [H.R.]Haldeman and [John] Ehrlichman and all the rest of them not only to run, but what causes us to vote for them.

I've been influenced heavily by great soul artists. I see myself as a soul singer. I sing from my soul - I write from my soul.

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.

The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.