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Exlpore more Writing quotes

"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."

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

"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do- to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street."

"T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others."

"I believe the first draft of a book - even a long one - should take no more than three months. Any longer and - for me, at least - the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity."

"I'm likely to stay here, pen in hand, until dusk comes and my writing melts into the twilight."
Explore more quotes by Rainbow Rowell

"She kept forcing herself to remember the entire conversation, playing it back and playing it back, all the way through, forcing a finger down her memory's throat."

"Parfois, écrire se rapproche de la chute libre : vos doigts s'agitent sur le clavier comme vos jambes dans le vide."

"He's mad at me.""For what?""For not being like him."Eleanor looked dubious. "Has he been mad at you for the last sixteen years?""Basically."

"There was something about the music on that tape. It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and her stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something nervous. It made Eleanor feel like everything, like the world, wasn't what she'd thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing."

"Just because it had happened before didn't mean it wasn't serious. It didn't mean he didn't need them."

"He sat up. He smiled. Something heavy and winged took off from his chest.Eleanor hadn't written him a letter, it was a postcard.Just three words long."

"She knew Neal loved her. Good for him for realizing it wasn't enough to make him happy. That was very mature of him. He was probably saving them both a lot of heartache."

"Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea."

"This is new to us, you know? Your mother's sorry. She's sorry that she hurt your feelings, and she wants you to invite your girlfriend over for dinner.""So that she can make her feel bad and weird?""Well she is kind of weird, isn't she?"Park didn't have the energy to be angry. He sighed and let his head fall back on the chair. His dad kept talking. "Isn't that why you like her?"
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