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"One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one."
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Exlpore more Creativity quotes
"Imagination is the creative force that through necessity yields solutions to resolve the issues that face us."
"No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist."
"But the detail of the poem shows power akin to genius, and reveals to us that much neglected law of literary history -- that potential genius can never become actual unless it finds or makes the Form which it requires."
"The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal that you can gather votes like box tops is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."
"And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right."
"We are all artists, painting the world with our thoughts while coloring the universe with our deeds."
"If you ever desire to give birth to anything at all, then you cannot do without solitude."
"Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it."
"Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach."
Explore more quotes by James Gunn
"I could give you some names of Workshop participants who are as good as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their merit or have not been adequately published."
"That certainly is one approach to take. My own is to acknowledge the inner child and try to work with my first fascination with science fiction. I have tried to build on its idea content and narrative drive rather than to discard them."
"It also is true that some ideas naturally work themselves out over a longer period of time than a single human life can encompass."
"In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope."
"I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style."
"One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one."
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