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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."
"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it."
"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."
"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."
Explore more quotes by Dalton Trumbo
"One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one."
"The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people."
"Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for."
"Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen."
"I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do."
"Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."
"Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
"A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not."
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