The Great Writers' Quote Thread

Discussion in 'General Writing' started by Lucas, Aug 5, 2013.

  1. Luis Thompson

    Luis Thompson Banned

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    You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

    It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

    The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

    Vladimir Nabokov
     
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  2. Joe_Hall

    Joe_Hall I drink Scotch and I write things

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    "Business or Profession?"
    "I guess you'd call me a writer."
    "No profession," said the police car, as if talking to itself.

    Rad Bradbury
     
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  3. AntPoems

    AntPoems Contributor Contributor

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    Bradbury was amazing. I like this one, from an interview in the Paris Review, when asked about his influences:

    A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I am. But it burns with a high flame.
     
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  4. yugen

    yugen New Member

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    "My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write." - Harlan Coben
     
  5. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Iain Banks kept a writing computer that wasn't connected to the Internet to avoid distractions.
     
  6. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    George RR Martin, too. And a couple others I can't remember. Makes sense.
     
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  7. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    There used to be a Linux writing program that took over your entire screen and didn't allow you to minimize the software. If you wanted to use the internet or do anything else with the computer, you had to exit completely out of the software. The idea was that people would be less likely to be distracted and start browsing than if they could just minimize the program.
     
  8. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    that’s what this program does

    https://getcoldturkey.com/writer/
     
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  9. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    I like watching people, but I don’t like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them.

    - Susan Sontag
     
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  10. AntPoems

    AntPoems Contributor Contributor

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    I just ran across this comment on another site and loved it so much that I had to share it.
    From the weekly fark writers thread
     
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  11. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

    - Susan Sontag
     
  12. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    From Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, on H. G. Wells's writing style:

    "Productivity in literature is more a sleight of hand than a triumph of will. Write only three pages a day, and you will look as industrious as the ant. Once a writer has found a voice, it is a question of finding the daily energy to drill down and make it flow again. Wells, with his fluid but far from meticulous style... had plenty of time to write a book a year and still engage in his other preoccupations, love and work with within the Fabian circle."
     
  13. Stephen1974

    Stephen1974 Active Member

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    Mark Twain — 'God created war so that Americans would learn geography.'
     
  14. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    "In retrospect, we know how to write when we begin. What we learn from doing it is what writing was for."

    -- Joan Didion, as reported in the New Yorker. Nathan Hiller added his own astute comment: "How to put together a paragraph, whether to add a 'the' or not: by the time you're thirty, the sound of your best writing is in your mind's ear, and the hardest part is listening. What to do with those sentences, how to turn the craft of storytelling away from shared delusion, is the effort of a life. Many -- most writers never make it the full distance. Didion did. Her work was her own answer to the question of what writing and living are for. It should be ours, too."
     
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  15. GrahamLewis

    GrahamLewis Seeking the bigger self Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    "A man with nothing to say has no words." John Steinbeck.
     
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  16. AntPoems

    AntPoems Contributor Contributor

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    "So, one bear I wrestle is being distracted by ideas that don’t work. But I think this is probably a thorn in the side of every creative: not every idea works. Persistence pays off when the idea is truly good, but foolish persistence on a bad idea is a waste of time. Part of learning to master a craft is, I think, developing an intuitive feel for when an idea should be pursued or abandoned."

    - Alex Baia, from an interview by Sarah Pessin
     
  17. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    Proof that John Steinbeck never met Donald Trump.
     
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  18. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    "I like a good story well told. That's the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself."

    --Mark Twain
     
  19. Vince Higgins

    Vince Higgins Curmudgeon. Contributor

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    “Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

    Kurt Vonnegut.
     
  20. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    "Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader...”

    ― Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

    I feel this way when a beta reader says, "But will most people know (fill in the blank with anything but the most common concepts/phrases/words/historical events)?" It is not my goal to force readers to look up every other word I write, but occasionally I do slip in a collection of letters that appeals to those who don't inhabit the realm of the lowest common denominator.

    Another one I found recently that offers a classier alternative to planner/pantser (terms I particularly dislike):

    “I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”

    ― George R.R. Martin
     
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  21. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    Dr.Ghomshei better known as Elahi Ghomshei, is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, author, and lecturer on literature, art, and mysticism.


    [​IMG]


    (I just quote some of his words but am not his follower)


    It doesn't matter if you don't attain all your ideals in your life, but move in the direction of your ideal goals.

    We should memorize that we can do unexpressed things but can not take back what we have expressed.

    We are not earthy beings who go to heaven, yet we are heavenly beings who came up from dust!

    Think about life but don't be regretful about it

    seeing is a reality, but seeing right is an advantage

    At the beginning of every day, think you have been born just now; be kind and be a lover. Maybe there is no tomorrow.

    The difficulty is something that turns the cooper in you into gold!

    We all live to send a message throughout our life!

    Life is going through love and beauty direction, and being free from every dependency even being alive because the purpose of going through this path is the same life and being not in this direction is death and nonexistence.

    We came to this world to find our value, not live at any cost!
     
  22. Vince Higgins

    Vince Higgins Curmudgeon. Contributor

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    Some of my favorite books forced me to hit the library. (now the internet)
     
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  23. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Me, too.
     
  24. Louanne Learning

    Louanne Learning Happy Wonderer Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.

    ~ William Blake
     
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  25. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    Dr. Mahmud Hessabi was an Iranian scientist in mathematics and physics. He met Albert Einstein a few times, and they had some discussions on the scientific ground.


    [​IMG]




    These are some of his words:


    Human doesn't fall in love with beauty, but he falls in love with what seems beautiful to him!

    Whatever human has had more valuable character, he is more polite and humble on the same level.

    Art plays with the feelings of man!

    Art is the spice of life!

    I don't understand the play of the world!

    The sad story of life is not that humans die, but the tragic story is that they stop to love!

    All love to go to heaven, but nobody likes to die!

    The world is vast enough to place all beings in itself, so instead, we occupy the place of others; try to find our location!
     

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