“When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.” – Annie Dillard
"As for you, little envious Prigs, snarling, bastard, puny Criticks, you'll soon have rail'd your last: Go hang yourselves." - François Rabelais
I didn't discover this on my own, but rather, had it presented to me. I haven't empathized with a quote so much since "Painting is easy when you don't know how." (Edgar Degas, if anyone is curious.) "Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an 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 to the public.” --Winston Churchill
"I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow." - Margaret Atwood
"You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different." - Neil Gaiman “Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.” - Iain Banks
Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master form. Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas. Robert McKee
“I would go on writing even if I knew I was not going to be published, ever. I couldn’t help it.” -John LeCarre
Reviving a long-dead thread: "The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from." --Gene Fowler
“Writing is trying to know beforehand what one would write if one wrote, which one never knows until afterward.” - Marguerite Duras
I'd forgotten that this thread existed. If I'd remembered, I'd have posted the two following quotes here, as well as on the "Favorite Quotes" thread:
"If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea." --Mark Twain
(For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.)- Sir Arthur Eddington
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are." -- attributed to W. Somerset Maugham (And, yes, I posted it on another quote thread the other day, but it belongs here, too.)
Uh, isn't this thread for writer's quotes? This seems like a science quote, and he was not a writer. Furthermore, what's with all the definition links?
Because Science. And Sir Arthur was certainly a writer. Not a novelist, true, but a prolific author of books on science aimed at everyday people. Check out his bibliography on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/28292.Arthur_Stanley_Eddington Actually, aspiring writers of science fiction would benefit from reading his work, even today.
"A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean." - Will Durant --- “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.” - Søren Kierkegaard
"One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life."- Kahlil Gibran
"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves."- Kahlil Gibran
