Writing Quotes - Page 462

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

College is great. It's the only time in life where you can write a check for 39 cents... and bounce it.

If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through.

The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

It is well to write love letters. There are certain things for which it is not easy to ask your mistress face to face, like money for instance.

Meditation needs no results. Meditation can have itself as an end, I meditate without words and on nothingness. What tangles my life is writing.

When you write for very young children what they want is something familiar and safe and stereotyped.

It's true that writing can give new forms to concepts that existed previously with far less clarity, but in terms of the other half of a story's story - the way a story is received and interpreted and used - the audience plays a part in that too.

I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner thoughts on the computer at the end of other things I was writing and ended up faxing four pages of hideous stuff to my accountant so I don't do that now.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

I keep a journal, and every day I write down one great play that I had that day. I don't write down any negatives.

I always feel a responsibility to the people I write about. I feel obligated to portray them in the way they feel is proper.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes

All I do is write their names on the lineup card and let them play. It’s not a tough job. I haven’t misspelled one name yet.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.