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Writing Quotes
"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness."
36
"No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking."
34
"I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer."
33
"Modern American cinema seems to me superficial. The intention is to understand a certain reality, and the result is nothing but a photographing of that reality."
31
"That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do."
31
"I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread."
30
"We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."
30
"It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade."
28
"If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average."
25
"We're writing a book together. She just finished one. Did you read it? Among the Porcupines?"
23
"Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great."
22
"It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't."
18
"Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical."
18
"When you're writing for newspapers you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day."
17
"Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them."
16
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."
16
"Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!"
15
"Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel."
13
"In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable."
12
"My writings are the window of my soul through which you can see me, feel me, and understand me."
11
"That's why, when Alias came along, I knew I'd be OK if the show was on for five or six years because the writing was so good and the creative team was so strong."
11
"The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent."
11
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all."
10
"It's rare that I actually have a story in my head. I have events or 'what's the next move?' Like, Maggie, 'where's she going to go in this story, where's she going to end up?' Then the story has to fill in the in-between, and that comes as I'm starting it."
10
"Somebody is observing my writings, I know that.That's one reason why I keep reading and writing."
9
"Writing and telling are almost the same, the way I do it."
9
"I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away."
8
"What Writing Is: Telepathy, of course."
8
"Write about the desire you dare to dream."
8
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."
8
"I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book."
8
"I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words."
7
"The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine."
7
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