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"I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles."
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"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."
"You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world."
"As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience."
"Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists."
"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."
"I'd be somewhat of a lousy writer if I didn't know what to say."
"A true piece of writing sets you free."
Explore more quotes by Shannon Hale
"Ani saw herself clearly in that moment, as a face in darkness gains sudden dimensions in a flash of lightning - a young girl, a silly thing, a lapdog, a broken mare."
"My friends call me by my name.'You don't have any friends.'I don't want you to be my friend, Selia, or my servant, not now. I thought you were both. You have let me know I was wrong. So are you to treat me so. You are wrong."
"I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky."
"The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween."
"Hey, times are tough, and thirty gold coins can do a lot of good. But I guess you wouldn't know about needing money, since you grew up like a little princ...'(Rapunzel glares)'Prin... soner. I mean, prisoner! A prisoner in a tower, such a shame, that."
"The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am."
"In movies, we are accustomed to seeing handsome actors. It's so commonplace on the screen, large or small, that we barely note it as extraordinary. But in life, rarely do we encounter an onslaught of beauty, entire a hive of handsomeness, find ourselves awash in an ocean of attractiveness, drowning in a miasma of hotness."
"It doesn't seem to matter what we think...The prince will come up here and look at us as if we're barrels in a trader's wagon. And if I'm salt pork and he doesn't care for salt pork, then there's nothing I can do."
"Reading a book is like going on a great journey. You don't know what'll happen, but something is bound to change. And for me, that change has always been good."
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