"I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned."

Writing,

22

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned."

Exlpore more Writing quotes

"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!."

Sara Sheridan, Scottish Author

Writing, Mystery, Storytelling, Secrets, Skill

"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."

C. S. Lewis, British Author

Writing, Description, Delight, Imagination

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Author

Writing, Tragedy

"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."

Kilroy J. Oldster, American Author

Writing, Life, Religion, Nature

"I'm a fairly undisciplined writer."

Neil Gaiman, British Author

Writing, Writer

"Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Author

Writing, Identity, Creativity, People

"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

John F. Kennedy, American President

Writing, Americans, Country

"Pour your heart onto the page."

A. D. Posey, American Poet

Writing, Emotion, Expression, Creativity

"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."

Laurell K. Hamilton, American Writer

Writing, Magic, Rules

"Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal."

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher

Writing, Error, Effort, Understanding

Explore more quotes by Wally Lamb

"The roundness of life's design may be a sign that there is a presence beyond ourselves."

Life

"I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing."

Character

"Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words."

Attention

"Love stories are probably all I've ever been able to write or want to write."

Love

"Love comes in far more shapes and sizes than what the family-values crowd condones, of course."

Love

"I wanted to connect a modern story with a myth that I had read."

Inspirational

"Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love."

Love

"I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life."

Life

"When I was a kid, I was surrounded by girls: older sisters, older girl cousins just down the street... except for an older boy named Vito who threw rocks. Each year I would wish for a baby brother. It never happened."

Family

"I love the most the students with troubled lives."

Love