Writing Quotes - Page 366

"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.

Well, let’s start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it’s not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling. The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don’t just convey information, but also personality.

The one thing an aspiring writer must understand is that it's hard. If you think it's not hard, you're not doing it right.

My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.

Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

No one likes to work for free. To copy an artist's work and download it free is stealing. It's hard work writing and recording music, and it's morally wrong to steal it.

Ko Un's poems evoke the open creativity and fluidity of nature, and funny turns and twists of Mind. Mind is sometimes registered in Buddhist terms - Buddhist practice being part of Ko Un's background. Ko Un writes spare, short-line lyrics direct to the point, but often intricate in both wit and meaning. Ko Un has now traveled worldwide and is not only a major spokesman for all Korean culture, but a voice for Planet Earth Watershed as well.

To read and write will help you understand life. . .to sew and mend will help you survive it.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

The more transparent the writing, the more visible the poetry.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

Someone who does not write books, who thinks a lot, and who lives in unsatisfying society will usually be a good letter- writer.

I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich.

We all kind of grew up together with Art Blakey because we all were young and he gave us a chance to write. We had to write something that was good and to sit up with a great guy like Art Blakey and watch him.

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.

Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place.

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them.

I was a small business owner, father, and husband just living out in the suburbs. I kind of had a boring life until Post Secret came and turned that upside down. I printed up 3000 self-addressed postcards and handed them out to people on the street, inviting them to write down a secret on that postcard anonymously and mail it to me. I got a lot of surprises.

Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.

There's lots of bands where somebody will write lyrics and somebody else will sing them. It works for a lot of people, but that feels weird to me. I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it just feels fake.. I guess in my heart of hearts, whether the person has a good voice or not I want [the songs] to come from them. I don't know why.