"A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into."

Writing, End, Trying

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"A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into."

Exlpore more Writing quotes

"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."

Haruki Murakami, Japanese Writer

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"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher

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"A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can."

Debasish Mridha, American Author

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"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."

Stephen King, American Author

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"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."

Sylvia Plath, American Poet

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"Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea."

Terry Pratchett, English Author

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"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."

A. D. Posey, American Poet

Writing, Love, Creativity, Art

"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."

Kilroy J. Oldster, American Author

Writing, Curiosity, Discovery, Life

"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed."

Stephen King, American Author

Writing, Simplicity, Style, Truth

"An author's operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature."

Kilroy J. Oldster, American Author

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Explore more quotes by Helen Dunmore

"I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me."

Family, Sister, Being, Children, Now

"To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation."

History,

"As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates."

Time, Parents, Teachers

"Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear."

Poetry, Sound, Weight, Words

"I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing."

Influence, Writing

"I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place."

Age, History, Culture, Language

"A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into."

Writing, End, Trying

"Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book."

Hope, Deep, Mourning

"However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition."

Writing, First, Poems, Tradition

"Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words."

Poet, Poets, Words