Writing Quotes - Page 630

More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.

When you're sitting down and you're blocked and you just start writing and something in your mind just clicks, you start seeing connections and so on, you really do feel like you're channeling something else.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

As a man lives and thinks, so he will write.

Even more precious is his Edward writes, I'm always saying that it is not the spirits who are getting it wrong; it's more likely that I am misinterpreting their messages.

The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.

...compartmentalization of occupations and interests bring about a separation of that mode of activity commonly called 'practice' from insight; of imagination from executive 'doing.' Each of these activities is then assigned its own place in which it must abide. Those who write the anatomy of experience then suppose that these divisions inhere in the very constitution of human nature.

To me the fact that a Vice President can go to Capitol Hill and lobby for torture is just unbelievable. Just unbelievable! The fact that a small clique of attorneys in the Department of Justice can write how can we get around the Geneva Conventions so that we can torture during interrogations - I can't even get their mentally. And when you read their briefs, they didn't get there mentally.

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

[Robert] Aikman would write horror stories that weren't gore, they weren't slashers, and they weren't monster stories either. He called them ghost stories. The main thing about them was the vibe. It was really disquieting. He wanted to sketch the scene so that you could see it and know the characters and get a feel for the motion - and then ask yourself why and not get a final answer. Leave something that itches. I loved that!

The writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just closing the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else.

Without a reader, I cannot write. It's like a kiss: they cannot be done alone.

None of my English teachers in college were praising me or telling me I was anything special. But then in creative writing classes they were. And I enjoyed those more anyway.

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really--I just want to.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.

I write characters focusing on them as human beings, and then you wrap them within a culture. So I think I can connect with him as a person with brown skin who's viewed differently by the world. In terms of his culture, we're thinking about where we are locating Wakanda within the continent, and what the people and history of that region are like. It's a process of investigation to help inform the story at this point. But we are going to be engaged with consultants who are experts on the continent and on African history and politics.

You call this a script? Give me a couple of 5,000-dollar-a-week writers and I will write it myself.

Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.

Don't 'write what you know.' Make up something new!