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All Quotes Collection
"It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle."
48
"It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow."
62
"Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured."
46
"No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge."
53
"Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy."
58
"Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment."
62
"The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong."
47
"I'm dense when it comes to discouragement."
45
"When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat."
59
"That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me."
43
"I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre."
44
"A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story."
53
"For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel."
47
"I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans."
46
"I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command."
51
"During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions."
46
"I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium."
50
"Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down."
43
"If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer."
50
"Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death."
44
"Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past."
96
"The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective."
61
"There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own."
64
"Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself."
52
"You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical."
Self,
24
"The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons."
24
"My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable."
33
"My London constituency in Hackney has one of the highest levels of gun crime in the country. But the problem is no longer confined to inner city areas. Gun crime has spread to communities all over Britain."
24
"Gun crime is a major cause of fear and distress throughout the UK. The problem is deeply entrenched in a wide range of social and cultural factors and therefore not an isolated issue."
23
"The jam is moving toward the Capitol where Congress sits in judgment on all the administrative agencies of Government."
33
"I stand on the sidewalk watching it because the responsibility is mine and I must, I take a very firm hold on the handles of the baby carriage and I wheel it into the traffic."
25
"Sometimes when I get home at night in Washington I feel as though I had been in a great traffic jam."
25
"There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill."
55
"I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks."
41
"To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there."
41
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