Writing Quotes - Page 507

I think I really scored with my parents. All of my friends pretty much came from broken homes, and my parents are still together, but not only that, they're still in love and still write together.

If a reporter doesn't like the person he's writing about, it shows up in his article.

Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business.

I can think of no one more qualified to write about the modern South than Curtis Wilkie

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.

My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit the subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés.

Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.

Write to me frequently & the longest letters possible; never mind whether you have facts or no to communicate; fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.

No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth

A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty is a beautifully written portrait of Eudora Welty and her amazing life. Carolyn J. Brown carries the reader through Welty's long, productive writing career and introduces her family and friends along the way. The book's very readable text, its lovely use of Welty quotes, and its excellent photographs make the work a treasure. This intimate look at Eudora Welty is a welcome addition for her readers.

This writing wasn't painful. It was like being high.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

Getting even is one reason for writing.

I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.

I've always assumed from the beginning that I had relatively few contemporaries among my readership. Not that I was consciously writing for a younger audience but that what I was doing interested a younger audience, or at least threatened them less.

I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on a novel. My third novel, in fact.

With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.