Badly Written Quotes

In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile. It looks beautiful, but soulless. So I warn them that, often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say . . . And you say, "It's so well-written, but who gives a fuck?" For certain, the guy who wrote it doesn't give a fuck. It's not something that has to do with his life; it's just something well-written and illuminating, and writing is not about that. The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about . . .

Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws. Why do we have to keep playing this strange game? ~ Etgar Keret

Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written. ~ Joseph Roth

A book is either nicely written or it's badly written. That's it. ~ Oscar Wilde

Any sufficiently badly-written science is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Aaron Allston

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. ~ Frank Zappa

as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century ~ Oscar Wilde

For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity with certain sensuous forms of art - and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. It is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem - poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'We must be careful,' said Goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it. ~ Oscar Wilde

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written.
A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.
Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive. ~ William Carlos Williams

I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true. ~ Haruki Murakami

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. ~ Oscar Wilde

The cover is alluring. The beginning may be enthralling. But there's no culmination and no happy ending. So I sagely advise you to stop chaptering. I'm badly written."
His nose met mine. "Give me the rights, and I'll edit and rewrite. Polish you to perfection. But you won't make best sellers, for you'll never be published. You will be on my shelf only. ~ S. Ann Cole

The enemy is not the badly written page; it is the empty page the great advantage of a badly written page is that it can be rewritten. It can be improved. A blank page is zero. In fact, it's worse than zero, because it represents territory you're afraid, unwilling, or too lazy to explore. Avoid exploring this territory long enough, and you'll abandon your book. ~ Timothy Hallinan

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen. ~ Stanley Elkin

I did a terrible television pilot that was so badly written and dumb that it became a turning point for me and I decided that I would never accept a job just because I needed the money. ~ Fran Drescher

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. ~ Truman Capote

Though they have things in common, good writing and talented writing are not the same.
[…]
If you start with a confused, unclear, and badly written story, and apply the rules of good writing to it, you can probably turn it into a simple, logical, clearly written story. It will still not be a good one. The major fault of eighty-five to ninety-five percent of all fiction is that it is banal and dull.
Now old stories can always be told with new language. You can even add new characters to them; you can use them to dramatize new ideas. But eventually even the new language, characters, and ideas lose their ability to invigorate.
Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.
Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.
Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - vividly, forcefully - that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn't. ~ Samuel R. Delany

A badly written novel can always be shortened to a poem. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary. ~ Stephen Marche

All books are good," he said.
"That's not true," I said. "I've read some really bad books." I was thinking specifically of Anne of Green Gables, which we'd been forced to read the term before and which was the most stupid, annoying book I'd ever encountered.
"They weren't bad books," Phin countered patiently. "They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are the books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone. ~ Lisa Jewell

(Slap) "Owhhh ... " Raymond yelled as the Old Man's cane hit his face. ~ Judy Byington

Every role is challenging in its own way, but the most challenging roles are the ones that are badly written - then it's completely up to you to come up with something that is interesting to the story and myself as an actor. ~ Richard Schiff

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about. ~ Joseph Roth

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. ~ Toni Morrison

A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers, giving them not only a faithful picture, but likewise human documents that may be relied upon. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

I was turning up at sets where inexperienced people were making these badly written films - but they were doing it; that was the point. They were getting their films out there. And they were paying me, so they obviously had access to money. I just thought, 'I can make something better than this.' ~ Dexter Fletcher

Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term. ~ Carl R. Trueman

To say it once more: today I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, "music" for those dedicated to music, those who are closely related to begin with on the basis of common and rare aesthetic experiences, "music" meant as a sign of recognition for close relatives in artibus - an arrogant and rhapsodic book that sought to exclude right from the beginning the profanum vulgus of "the educated" even more than "the mass" or "folk. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I love deliberately badly written books. ~ Richard Prince

We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too. ~ Nick Hornby

It was like listening to two badly written computer programs trying to convince each other that they were sentient. ~ Greg Egan

There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet? ~ Charles Stross

The Old Man's "job" was to ensure success of a certain Pagan holiday celebration–an exact opposite of LDS temple instruction that signified fellow sister-brother's unification with the Divine. ~ Judy Byington

The world is a stage, but the play is badly written. ~ Oscar Wilde

Listen you little turd, don't tell me my business. It's not worth the risk," the Old Man snarled.
"But Green ... Yikes, that stings! ~ Judy Byington

The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him. ~ Oscar Wilde

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A storm in Scotland was like nothing she'd ever experienced in London. Here, the elements felt alive, sentient. This storm was a raging monster that had grown in fury since yesterday.
Sometimes, she thought Scotland was more than a country, more than a rough and magnificent land with a border created by men, written on a map, and defended for hundreds of years. Scotland was almost a living creature that could turn and bite your hand if you didn't speak about it in fond and loving tones.
When she walked the hills and glens surrounding Drumvagen, she sometimes felt like she was being watched. Not by living inhabitants, but those who'd gone before, proud men and women who hated the English and now hovered over their land to protest her appearance.
For all her imagination, she didn't believe in the hundreds of folktales Brianag told the children. The trees weren't alive; they were simply trees. Brownies didn't do chores for obedient children. Sea creatures in the shape of horses didn't bedevil the coast.
Yet something about this storm was otherworldly, as if God were punishing them. ~ Karen Ranney

When I got tired, Logan would sing me to sleep, sometimes a painfully appropriate song like Flogging Molly's "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" or Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars." Sometimes he'd pick a lilting Irish lullaby, or even a song he'd written himself. ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

When I was 14, I saw 'Waiting for Godot.' It's one of those plays that if it's done badly is absolutely dire and can put you off acting for life. But I was laughing all the way through it. ~ Kit Harington

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre]. ~ Edward Albee

conundrums in biology: this is the fact that our genes, which supposedly define us as a species, but also distinguish you or I or anyone else on the planet from each other, make up only 2 per cent of our DNA. The other 98 per cent had been written off as 'junk'; ~ John Parrington

But it's not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can't forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It's not possible to forget anybody you've destroyed. ~ James Baldwin

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone. ~ Regina Brett

But Ruth has not read all the letters I've written to her. She couldn't. Though I wrote them for her, I also wrote them for me, after all, and after she passed away, I placed another box beside the original. In this box are letters written with a shaking hand, letters marked only by my tears, not hers. They are letters written on what would have been yet another anniversary. Sometimes I think about reading them, just as she used to, but it hurts me to think that she never had the chance. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Scott's friends on the forum didn't know his big picture. They read a phrase like "It's going to kill me to live without him" for its precise meaning, and nothing else. They didn't read more than those nine words into the message. They didn't take offense, didn't try to talk him out of it. Didn't resent it for its presumed relativity.

"Of course it is," they said. And it was the same way they'd responded to every other thing he'd told them about himself: his thoughts on parenting, on marriage and sex, on education and race. They read what he wrote, and only what he wrote, and they responded. Not always in agreement - he'd had plenty of heated discussions over the past year on this issue or that. But he didn't need yes-men any more than he needed someone to read twenty-one extra words into the nine he'd written. ~ Julie Lawson Timmer

I say this often, THINK. There is something in life called common sense. Webster's says common sense is sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. Perhaps this is why in 1776, Thomas Paine used these words as a title for the most famous pamphlet ever written. ~ Jack White

Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you're positive he can't rise up behind you. If you're going to burn him, make sure he's dead. Because if he's alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page. ~ Philip K. Dick

His will be done, as done it surely will be, whether we humble ourselves to resignation or not. The impulse of creation forwards it; the strength of powers, seen and unseen, has its fulfillment in charge. Proof of a life to come must be given. In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof be written. In fire and in blood do we trace the record throughout nature. In fire and in blood does it cross our own experience. Sufferer, faint not through terror of this burning evidence. Tired wayfarer, gird up thy loins, look upward, march onward. Pilgrims and brother mourners, join in friendly company. Dark through the wilderness of this world stretches the way for most of us: equal and steady be our tread; be our cross our banner. For staff we have His promis, whose 'word is tried, whose way perfect": for present hope His providence, 'who gives the shield of salvation, whose gentleness makes great'; for final home His bosom, who 'dwells in the height of Heaven'; for crowning prize a glory exceeding and eternal. Let us so run that we may obtain: let us endure hardness as good soldiers; let us finish our course, and keep the faith, reliant in the issue to come off more than conquerors: 'Art though not from everlasting mine Holy One? WE SHALL NOT DIE! ~ Charlotte Bronte

It was beautifully worded and painfully read; the things that were written, were those never said ~ Lang Leav

On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century ... First of all, what style should I employ? ~ Umberto Eco

I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child. ~ Jennifer Haigh

I had this illusion that if I kind of dressed badly that I wouldn't stand out. So I actually went out of my way to not look different to the extent I could. ~ Lisa Randall

Give up your holy books, and remember the Lord, you fool, and stop oppressing others so badly. ~ Bhagat Kabir

I begin to want things I've never wanted before: braids, a dressing-gown, a purse of my own. Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of it without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I've done these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly. Partly this is a relief. ~ Margaret Atwood

I wasn't a normal professor. I had worked in government. I hadn't written nine zillion books. I was a hands-on professor. ~ Madeleine Albright

I've written extensively on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and seen up close how those women, who were born when the country hoped for a male heir, made their way as leaders. ~ Kate Williams

When one reflects on the books one never has written, and never may, though their schedules lie in the beautiful chirography which marks the inception of an unexpressed thought upon the pages of one's notebook, one is aware, of any given idea, that the chances are against its ever being offered to one's dearest readers. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes things worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger. ~ Nicole Krauss

Countrymen: I have given proofs, as well as the best of you, of desiring liberty for our country, and I continue to desire it. But I place as a premise the education of the people, so that by means of instruction and work they may have a personality of their own and that they may make themselves worthy of that same liberty. In my writings I have recommended the study of the civic virtues, without which there can be no redemption. I have also written (and my words have been repeated) that reforms, to be fruitful, must come from above, that those which spring from below are uncertain and insecure movements. Imbued with these ideas, I cannot do less than condemn, and I do condemn, this absurd, savage rebellion, planned behind my back, which dishonors the Filipinos and discredits those who can speak for us. I abominate all criminal actions and refuse any kind of participation in them, pitying with all my heart the dupes who have allowed themselves to be deceived. Go back, then, to your homes, and may God forgive those who have acted in bad faith. ~ Jose Rizal

You check to see the facts are correct where business is concerned but if I read everything that was written about me, I'd end up feeling totally insecure about myself. ~ Elle Macpherson

I see tremendous imbalance in the world. A very uneven playing field, which has gotten tilted very badly. I consider it unstable. At the same time, I don't exactly see what is going to reverse it. ~ George Soros

A great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of 'balance' and 'deterrence'. ~ Alva Myrdal

It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority," the Federalist tell us. And modern commanders in chief tend to reflexively invoke the war metaphor when the public demands that they take action to solve the emergency of the month, real or imagined.

"War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism has it, but Bourne could just as easily written that "war is the health of the presidency." Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to actions fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.

Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty. Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism, or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on. ~ Gene Healy

The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room. ~ Vivian Gornick

He saw his contract, written on a single sheet of yellow paper, as a great source of strength. Later, however, he came to realize that the contract saddled him with all the obligations and the company with none. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

You didn't have to say it. It's written all over your face. You think more of that oversized iron-bender than you do of me. ~ Karen Witemeyer

On 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' it takes almost a year to get 10 shows written. It always reminds me of my old yeshiva days, where you used to sit over a piece of Talmud and analyze everything that was going on. ~ David Steinberg

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross. ~ Patrick White

This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Westchester, and a lounge in the library or a nature path gets named after him, and a bunch of blue-blood kids remember him fondly. Sorry. There's about one story a year like that. Poor Billy Fuckup, Jr., in his Gap khakis, the pressure of going to classes all day really got to him. If I were a better person, I would have felt badly having seen things like that. ~ Cara Hoffman

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals? ~ Lord Byron

Fellow-servant of God, your sphere may be an humble and inconspicuous one; the flock to which God has called you to minister may be a small one; but faithfulness to your trust is what is required of you. There may be an Eliab ready to taunt you, and speak contemptuously of "those few sheep in the wilderness" (1 Sam. 17:28), as there was for David to encounter; but regard not their sneers. It is written, "His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" (Matthew 25:21). ~ Arthur W. Pink

The blond stuffs her hairbrush, which is now spun with gold and black silk (a miniature angel's nest) back into her backpack next to her anthology of English literature. The pages are so thin, they're like dead girls' dreams, translucent skin. On them it seems that everything that has ever been thought has been written. ~ Laura Kasischke