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Quotations by Subject
- 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)
- First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.
- Martin Myers
- When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.
- Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been, 2010
- 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
- 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
- I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice.
- Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Commencement Speech, 2008
- The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.
- Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Commencement Speech, 2008
- You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
- Ray Bradbury (1920 - ), advice to writers
- 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 05, 2004
- 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
- This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you’re doing, or it comes out flat. You can’t fake your way through this.
- Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 29, 2004
- The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that it’s not about me. It’s about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, 'I loved how you said…' and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.
- Reverend Sean Parker Dennison, Ministrare, 04-07-2006
- Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.
- Rhys Alexander, Writing Gooder, 12-09-05
- A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
- Ring Lardner (1885 - 1933), "How to Write Short Stories"
- It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
- Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
- Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
- Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
- Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
- Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)
- Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
- Russel Lynes
- The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
- Russell Baker (1925 - )
- I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)
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