Brief Writing Quotes

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates. ~ Mordecai Richler

In my brief writing life, it means I am still lucky that I have at least one more novel to complete. I do not expect that a story will arrive just because it is time to write another novel. It doesn't happen that way. ~ David Bergen

A computer search would have given me a list of pertinent cases, but without that I had to read everything. That is harder by far, but you end up learning a lot more. I was forced to remember cases because making copies of everything was too expensive. Keeping cases in your head is good, too, because cases are like puzzle pieces floating around in your mind, and sometimes, in moments of creativity, they fall into place and form a picture. If they were words on a screen that you could pull up anytime you wished, that phenomenon wouldn't happen as easily. ~ Shon Hopwood

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief." ~ Franz Kafka

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instead of a book, what if we're actually writing (or not writing) in the margins of our lives? What if our lives are books? What is the sign of our presence? Are we pressing into the margins our interpretations and questions? Are we circling offending verbs and drawing furious arrows to the margin where we scrawl "irony," "frustration," "voiceless," "unfair!" Or do we simply turn the pages, passively receiving what's given, furiously disagreeing but remaining silent about it? ~ Patti Digh

Write what is important to you, regardless of fashion or marketability or anything like that – all those things are so far out of your control that you may as well not think about them. Of course, this may mean you'll never be published but that's a risk we all take every single time we set hands to keyboard or pen to paper. For me, if I can sit back at the end of a project and say, 'yes, I stayed honest, I said what I wanted to say, and I made it sing to the best of my ability', then I'm happy enough. Of course, if anyone wants to buy the damned thing off me when I'm done, that's jam I won't refuse. ~ Celine Kiernan

I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too. ~ Susan Hill

We heard recently the touching story of a young flier who was killed in action. Before he died, he had time to scrawl only a few words as a brief final message to his parents back home. The note read: "Dear Mom and Pop; I had time to say my prayers. Jack." ~ James Keller

Do you know what the best and worst thing about a book is? The author can't answer all your questions, only your imagination can. ~ S.A. Tawks

You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and you should have a good agent and you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world. ~ Susan Orlean

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I will see 100 or 200 and I will take my time with them and I audition them for the two main roles. If I like what I see, but they're not exactly right for the role, I'll think well I have this other role that might work for them. Sometimes I will write a role for them because I want to work with them because they're so good. ~ Philippe Falardeau

how these words, wait to die
in the arms of all the poetry..
yet to be written. ~ Sanober Khan

No one can stop a home run. No one can understand what it really is, unless you have felt it in your own hands and body. As the ball makes its high, long arc beyond the playing field, the diamond and the stands suddenly belong to one man. In that brief, brief time, you are free of all demands and complications. ~ Sadaharu Oh

Climax: It's all downhill from here. ~ Buffy Andrews

On the blank page all things are possible. ~ Marty Rubin

I got the writing bug in the fourth grade when a poem of mine was published in the school newspaper. Music criticism came a little later, when I was in high school. ~ Ann Powers

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place. ~ Steven Millhauser

Without extraneous words or phrases or clauses, there will be room for implication. The longer the sentence, the less it's able to imply, And writing by implication should be one of your goals. Implication is almost nonexistent in the prose that surrounds you, The prose of law, science, business, journalism, and most academic fields. It was nonexistent in the way you were taught to write. That means you don't know how to use one of a writer's most important tools: The ability to suggest more than the words seem to allow, The ability to speak to the reader in silence. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg

When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else. ~ Louis C.K.

One night, Don Henley called, and I told him, 'I'm washing dishes and bike shorts.' He said, 'It's in the domestic exercises of life that one will find the biggest inspiration.' And he was right. ~ Sheryl Crow

If we are interested in a writing life - as opposed to a writing career - then we are in it for the process and not the product - for the body of work and not for the quick hit of one well-realised piece. ~ Julia Cameron

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite. ~ Alex Flinn

My wish is for my writing to "make glad hearts. ~ Marie Broussard-Landry

A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme. ~ Diane Johnson

It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by design. The wise writer writes the best he can and leaves it to posterity to decide about greatness. ~ Andrew M. Greeley

Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother's memory again. ~ Han Kang

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come. ~ Gertrude Stein

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. ~ J.K. Rowling

But I don't really write to honor the past. I write to investigate, to try to figure out what happened and why it happened, knowing I'll never really know. I think all the writers that I admire have this same desire, the desire to bring order out of chaos. ~ Horton Foote

There's nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself. Professor Piper ~ Rainbow Rowell

So little of what anything means comes through words. ~ Andre Alexis

I started writing this feature comedy in New York - a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes. ~ David Steinberg

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both. ~ August Wilson

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well. ~ Dani Shapiro

Writing - A torturous pleasure! ~ K.D. Faerydae

I've never written for kids… I'm just trying to tap into the kid in myself & just go with my taste. ~ Andrew Stanton

I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page. ~ Nora Roberts

The best writing comes out when you find yourself broken. Your heart is ripped open and all the feelings spill out into a beautiful mess on paper. ~ Shannen Wrass

For a brief moment, a veil is removed from Lawrence's eyes and I am able to see a sliver of his soul – beautiful yet full of naked yearning and pain that it takes my breath away. ~ Mia Asher

And these aches in my heart create poetry! ~ Avijeet Das

Canonical writing is born of an originality fused with tradition. – From the book jacket ~ Harold Bloom

Like a great ship, this season has run aground. Dawn and dusk alternate at an old man's pace. I live alone in an area known as the 'Waterside', writing a book akin to the Revelations of St. John. ~ Ge Fei

I wouldn't say "art" as much as "virtue," in the ancient Greek sense of "andreia" – manly action – or "arete," excellence. In my experience, Resistance kicks in any time we try to move ourselves from a lower plane to a higher. In other words, when we try to align with the better parts of our nature. This move can be creative (art) or physical (athletics) or it can be ethical, moral or spiritual. Have you ever tried to meditate? I have and it kicks my butt every time. Spiritual stuff is hard! But so is making "cold calls" if you're opening a new business. Somehow the principle is the same. We're trying to overcome our natural laziness, selfishness, sloppiness, etc. So I wouldn't say "art," I'd say "virtue. ~ Steven Pressfield

I collect my thoughts as if they will stain me, murder me, and then resurrect me.
Markus Zusak, When Dogs Cry ~ Markus Zusak

I was always observing. Even while talking, living, going through every motion, I was watching myself and the situation. That's a writer. Always observing. ~ Mary Ellen Hannibal

I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time
except maybe when I'm making love. ~ May Sarton

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books, ~ Shirley Jackson

My technicians are my most important tools. Once I establish a rapport with them, then they would understand me in my next film. I wouldn't have to train anyone new. I give a lot of respect to all my technicians, because I'm a technician too. I wouldn't be able to convey a feeling if the writer didn't write it well, and the cameraman didn't shoot it well. ~ Yash Chopra

Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time. ~ Simon Mawer