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Writing

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Writing
11/7/2007 12:41:00 AM quoteslover
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I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.

Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)
I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I've never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don't think that there are takebacks. I don't feel right about it.

Alison Headley, Digital Preservation and Blogs, SXSW 2006
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:41:52 AM quoteslover
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The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.

Bobby Knight (1940 - )
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:42:09 AM quoteslover
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Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:42:27 AM quoteslover
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Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Carol Burnett (1936 - )
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Charles de Montesquieu (1689 - 1755)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:42:52 AM quoteslover
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This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.

Colleen Wainwright, communicatrix, 03-23-2006
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)
Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

Daphne du Maurier (1907 - 1989)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:43:27 AM quoteslover
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Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris, interview in Louisville Courier-Journal, June 5, 2005
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Richelieu
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:43:32 AM quoteslover
433 Posts quoteslover's Avatar
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris, interview in Louisville Courier-Journal, June 5, 2005
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Richelieu
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:43:40 AM quoteslover
433 Posts quoteslover's Avatar
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris, interview in Louisville Courier-Journal, June 5, 2005
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Richelieu
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:44:30 AM quoteslover
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Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Edwin Schlossberg
If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.

Elaine Liner, We Got Naked, Now What, SXSW 2006
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:45:19 AM quoteslover
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Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, 'A Woman of Independent Means'
It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.

Eric A. Burns, Gossamer Commons, 06-15-05
You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910), in Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1951
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:45:45 AM quoteslover
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Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )
After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

George Ade (1866 - 1944), "Fables in Slang", 1899
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

George Burns (1896 - 1996)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:46:30 AM quoteslover
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A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)
Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.

Heather Armstrong, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:47:16 AM quoteslover
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How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.

Henry James (1843 - 1916), from his essay about the rules of writing
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:47:53 AM quoteslover
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The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:48:02 AM quoteslover
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The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:48:13 AM quoteslover
433 Posts quoteslover's Avatar
The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Inigo DeLeon
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:48:58 AM quoteslover
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Writing well mean never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there.'

Jef Mallett, Frazz, 07-29-07
The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.

Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 07-10-2006
Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.

Jesse Stuart
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:49:29 AM quoteslover
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I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Joan Didion (1934 - )
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

John Burroughs (1837 - 1921), The Snow-Walkers
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

John Irving (1942 - )
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:50:07 AM quoteslover
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Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)
Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:50:49 AM quoteslover
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Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

Katherine Paterson, The Spying Heart, 1989
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Leo Rosten (1908 - )
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.

Lord Brabazon (1884 - 1964)
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:51:38 AM quoteslover
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First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.

Martin Myers
There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively.

Min Kim, Better Blogging Brainstorming, SXSW 2006
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter De Vries
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:52:10 AM quoteslover
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In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD), Natural History
There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well.

Pliny the Younger (62 AD - 114 AD), Letters
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.

Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 07-03-05
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

Ray Bradbury (1920 - ), advice to writers
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:53:13 AM quoteslover
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At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Raymond Chandler (1888 - 1959)
Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com weblog, 10-09-04
I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January
Re: Writing
11/7/2007 12:53:51 AM quoteslover
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I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.

Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 03-13-05
If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear.

Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06
See things as they are and write about them. Don’t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.

Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06
Re: Writing