"Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index."

Writing, First

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"Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index."

Exlpore more Writing quotes

"The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Writing, Practice, Observation, Exercise

"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done."

John Steinbeck, American Author

Writing, Loneliness, Communication, Story

"Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, Tools, Writer

"If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day."

Philip Pullman, British Writer

Writing, Day, Luck

"Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, Plagiarism

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

Blaise Pascal, French Philosopher

Writing, Time

"In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, First, Summer

"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it."

Toni Morrison, American Novelist

Writing, World

"Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone."

John Updike, American Novelist

Writing, May, Writers

"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."

Emily Dickinson, American Poet

Writing, Word, Power, Expression

Explore more quotes by Julie Burchill

"A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold."

Man

"It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast."

Pretty

"A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men."

Man

"Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man."

Woman

"Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully."

Fame

"As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women."

Man

"The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact."

Life

"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."

Life

"Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index."

Writing