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"We do not write as we want but as we can."
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"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We write, edit, and rewrite the story of our own life employing descriptive words, metaphors, and symbols. Our lives are full of symbols including those supplied by nature and religion, which touch upon the mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Symbols inspire enduring hope by formulating idealist expectations."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I'm a fairly undisciplined writer."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person."
Author Name
Personal Development
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Pour your heart onto the page."
Author Name
Personal Development
"You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough."
Author Name
Personal Development
"One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane."
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Personal Development
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"I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool."
Values
"The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency."
Expediency
"Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction."
Simplicity
"At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely."
Party
"It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise."
Censure
"Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too."
Comfort
"There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are."
Process
"Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does."
Gender
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
Rules
"To write simply is as difficult as to be good."
Simplicity
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