02-27
The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
~ William Faulkner
When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.
― Connie Willis
02-28
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
~ William Faulkner
Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.
― Drew Goodman
03-01
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
~ Oscar Wilde
A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.
― Ian McEwan
03-02
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
~ John Steinbeck
There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
― Beatrix Potter
03-03
My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.
~ Susan Sontag
I write
Not
For the sake of glory
Not
For the sake of fame
Not
For the sake of success
But for the sake of my soul
― Beth Nimmo
Showing posts with label quotes about writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotes about writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Friday, July 1, 2016
One Hit Wonders and Imagination
Fun With Quotes
So how, exactly does one have fun with quotes?
Glad you asked! If you’re like me, you start by exchanging quotes on a daily basis with your Best Bud. But not just any quotes, writing quotes, to give each other inspiration. And then you pick the two best quotes of the week to share with the rest of the world - because ... why not? :-D
My quote from Jamie this week really tickled my fancy:
My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.
- Unknown
Isn’t this what writing is all about? You write a best-selling novel and then sit back and watch the money roll in. That’s how it works, right? Maybe not ...
You’d be surprised at the number of famous authors who only wrote one novel. Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty, one of my childhood favourites, and was able to enjoy her novel’s success for a brief time before passing away due to illness.
Despite the fact that Edgar Allan Poe was a prolific author, he only wrote one full novel. Margaret Mitchell hated the fame that came with Gone With the Wind and refused to write another novel. Wuthering Heights was the sole novel of Emily Bronte. J.D. Salinger penned The Catcher in the Rye and after enjoying its success for a brief time retreated from the public eye.
For the curious, Goodreads has a list of 120 authors who wrote one-hit wonders.
The quote I picked of those I sent this week is a little different:
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
― Criss Jami
Honestly, it wasn’t until I looked the author of this quote up that I realized I’ve quoted him before. I also featured Criss Jami in my first quotes post.
At first glance this really appealed to my hermit-like nature. I mean, I’d love to be locked away in a room with only my imagination for company, maybe a laptop as well (without an internet connection) to write on.
But then I looked at the quote from another angle. Perhaps it is not a person, but only the imagination that’s closed in a room, and the room could be one’s own mind. The rest of the world can be kept at bay, until you choose to let it in.
Food for thought.
Glad you asked! If you’re like me, you start by exchanging quotes on a daily basis with your Best Bud. But not just any quotes, writing quotes, to give each other inspiration. And then you pick the two best quotes of the week to share with the rest of the world - because ... why not? :-D
My quote from Jamie this week really tickled my fancy:
My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.
- Unknown
Isn’t this what writing is all about? You write a best-selling novel and then sit back and watch the money roll in. That’s how it works, right? Maybe not ...
You’d be surprised at the number of famous authors who only wrote one novel. Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty, one of my childhood favourites, and was able to enjoy her novel’s success for a brief time before passing away due to illness.
Despite the fact that Edgar Allan Poe was a prolific author, he only wrote one full novel. Margaret Mitchell hated the fame that came with Gone With the Wind and refused to write another novel. Wuthering Heights was the sole novel of Emily Bronte. J.D. Salinger penned The Catcher in the Rye and after enjoying its success for a brief time retreated from the public eye.
For the curious, Goodreads has a list of 120 authors who wrote one-hit wonders.
The quote I picked of those I sent this week is a little different:
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
― Criss Jami
Honestly, it wasn’t until I looked the author of this quote up that I realized I’ve quoted him before. I also featured Criss Jami in my first quotes post.
At first glance this really appealed to my hermit-like nature. I mean, I’d love to be locked away in a room with only my imagination for company, maybe a laptop as well (without an internet connection) to write on.
But then I looked at the quote from another angle. Perhaps it is not a person, but only the imagination that’s closed in a room, and the room could be one’s own mind. The rest of the world can be kept at bay, until you choose to let it in.
Food for thought.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Q is for Quotes About Writing
I suppose I could have used "Q" to talk about using quotation marks, but I want to do something a little different. My best bud and I exchange writing quotes on a daily basis to inspire/encourage each other, so I thought I'd take today to share some of my favourites.
Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.
~Lord Byron
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
~ Anne McCaffrey
Being an author is being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.
~Terri Guillemets
He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license.
~ Milton Berle
It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.
~ Stephen King
Writing a book is a adventure. To begin with it is a toy and amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him out to the public.
~ Winston Churchill
Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words – the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.
~J. Michael Straczynski
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
~ Douglas Adams
I’m in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
~ Solomon Short
Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
~ Harlan Ellison
Sometimes when I mean to pickup my pen I pickup my beer, and I write with my drunk and the ink is an intoxicant always, more so than any brew or fermented grape, my mind ferments momentarily and words are the raw hops but poetry flows out the bottle.
~Terri Guillemets
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~Thomas Mann
I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.
~ James Joyce
Ink surrounds me all the time
On my bed sheets, recorded in rhyme
Quills 'ever scribbling in my head
Sometimes damnit I forget what they said.
Ink has settled into my fingerprints
But to keep the words I fear to rinse...
~Terri Guillemets, Inkwells & Teapots
Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.
~Lord Byron
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
~ Anne McCaffrey
Being an author is being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.
~Terri Guillemets
He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license.
~ Milton Berle
It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.
~ Stephen King
Writing a book is a adventure. To begin with it is a toy and amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him out to the public.
~ Winston Churchill
Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words – the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.
~J. Michael Straczynski
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
~ Douglas Adams
I’m in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
~ Solomon Short
Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
~ Harlan Ellison
Sometimes when I mean to pickup my pen I pickup my beer, and I write with my drunk and the ink is an intoxicant always, more so than any brew or fermented grape, my mind ferments momentarily and words are the raw hops but poetry flows out the bottle.
~Terri Guillemets
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~Thomas Mann
I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.
~ James Joyce
Ink surrounds me all the time
On my bed sheets, recorded in rhyme
Quills 'ever scribbling in my head
Sometimes damnit I forget what they said.
Ink has settled into my fingerprints
But to keep the words I fear to rinse...
~Terri Guillemets, Inkwells & Teapots
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