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Writing Quotes
"I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do."
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"I started reading my manuscripts out loud, to hear what they sounded like. If the text flows with little effort, then I am satisfied, but if I keep stumbling and stuttering while I read, then I rewrite."
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"A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1."
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"Personal essay writing is analogous to undertaking a vision quest, a potential turning point in life taken to discover intimate personal truths, form complex abstract thoughts, and ascertain the intended spiritual direction of a person's life."
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"A writer must be willing to leave oneself behind in order to explore new territories of the mind and unearth primordial truths that startle and frighten us."
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"A writer is never alone, he is always in conversation with himself."
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"Be a poet and write your own unique poetry of life."
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"Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric."
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"To be a fantastic writer, live in your dreams and imaginations where you can dance like a peacock, swim like a shark, and fly like a butterfly. Live where reality has no power to change you."
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"The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater."
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"If my writing comes to a halt, I head to the shops: I find them very inspirational. And if I get into real trouble with my plot, I go out for a pizza with my husband."
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"A pen name is a nickname."
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"Men's memoirs are about answers; women's memoirs are about questions. Most male authors want to look good in their memoirs and have a place in posterity, while most women know that posterity is what happens when you no longer care. Women want to connect with others here and now; they couldn't care less about legacy!"
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"I'm not a writer, I just express in words!"
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"Writing a book is burning your brain to enlighten another man's mind."
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"I'm not worried about plagiarism, I don't care if every person between here and Hell's creation put their name on my work as long as it ends up in the eyes of someone that found peace in the words."
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"A writer writesregardless...even though...notwithstanding...despite...at any rate...anyhow...nevertheless...in the face of...undeterred by...heedless of...and because.The true writer simply continues to write."
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"And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right.Happy Eighth birthday, blog."
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"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
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"It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something too of the motives behind the social forces which judge those actions and which, I take it, we call a system of morality."
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"What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening."
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"To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide-- a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere."
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"But writing is a queer business. If one does anything that is sharp and keep enough to go over the line, to get itself with the work that is taken seriously, one has to have had either an unusual knowledge of or a peculiar sympathy with the characters one handles. One can't write about what one most admires always-you must, by some accident, have seen into your character very deeply, and it is this accident of intense realization of him that give your writing about him tone and distinction, that lifts it above the commonplace, in other words."
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"I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel-to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience."
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"We write, edit, and rewrite the story of our own life employing descriptive words, metaphors, and symbols. Our lives are full of symbols including those supplied by nature and religion, which touch upon the mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Symbols inspire enduring hope by formulating idealist expectations."
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"By applying their observational abilities along with full appliance of their logic and creative powers, writers attempt to create mental maps to share with other people regarding what they learned, think, and believe. The writer's vision can sway readers emotional state and in doing influence what they believe and how they behave."
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"The name of a great writer is usually bigger than the title of his book. Both literally and figuratively."
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"Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify."
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"Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing."
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"Once you are at the point where you can call yourself a writer, there's no turning back."
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"Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think."
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"It was never for you, Annie, or all the other people out there who sign their letters "Your number-one fan. The minute you start to write all those people are at the other end of the galaxy, or something. It was never for my ex-wives, or my mother, or for my father. The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end."
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"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
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"Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise . . . Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!'--Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories."
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"F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused."
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"As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words.""Yes, that's right," I agreed."I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?"I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE."My interviewer looked surprised, as though he'd expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. "That's your favorite word? Why?"I tried not to smirk. "Because."
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"Writing. Is it a way to be remembered,or a need to become immortal?"
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"Until you begin to write, then you will see the beauty of writing."
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"A writer fills the paper with the pictures of perception, experience, and feeling of real and imaginative lives."
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