Gorgeous Writing Quotes

There are few sounds at night on the frozen sea besides the roar of the wind. No plants to rustle, no waves to crash upon the shore, no birds to caw. The white owl flies on hushed wings. The white fox walks with silent tread. Even Inuit move as softly as spirits, the snow too hard to yield and crunch beneath our boots. We hear little, but what we do hear is vital: the exploding breath of a surfacing seal, the shift and crack of drifting ice. But in the forest there is always sound. The trees, even in their shrouds of snow, are alive, and their voices--groans, creaks, screams--never cease. ~ Jordanna Max Brodsky

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success. ~ Alexander Chee

Fiction gives us a reach into the lives of individuals that would otherwise be but a closed door. If we are gifted with a desire to tell tales, then we should tell them ... if only to reach but a few. ~ James D. Maxon

I remember when my daughter was twelve, suddenly a boy started hanging out in front of our house after school. It was this kid, Justin. My office at the time was right in the front, so I just looked out the window. I couldn't write. I couldn't concentrate. I was like, "What are you doing? What do you expect to achieve by standing in front of my house with my daughter inside?" I hated that kid so much. ~ Cinco Paul

I wasn't gorgeous but I still didn't understand why I wasn't good enough for anyone. ~ Shelly Crane

I'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing what he does. I'd almost prefer the word 'craftsman'. He's like one of those old-fashioned ship builders who conceived the build of the boat in their mind and after that touched every single piece that went into the boat. ~ William Golding

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life. ~ Amy Tan

I abandoned my second novel completely. Writing 'Kavalier & Clay,' I had several moments of utter collapse. Same with 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.' ~ Michael Chabon

Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. ~ William Shakespeare

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity. ~ Anne Enright

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music. ~ Melanie Martinez

Creating life with words is my favorite magic to weave. ~ Jen Golembiewski

I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on a novel. My third novel, in fact. ~ William Finnegan

I want to explore and do things with excellence. I want to write songs that resonate with me and will resonate with a live audience. I'm exploring fresh sounds. ~ Anthony Evans

I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen ~ Robin Sloan

Writing "Snugs the Snow Bear" was an exhilerating walk on a beach - I stopped now and then to study the rock pools, put my hand to my forehead, to gaze over the vast ocean, and the tide danced; played music at my feet, turned over precious shells and stones, returned them to me, polished. I picked one, held it to my ear. The tide rushed in, ran over my naked feet, and I was home. ~ Suzy Davies

Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead. ~ Amanda Hocking

In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say, 'I can't describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.' ~ James Blunt

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle. ~ Eric Hoffer

I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap. ~ Kathleen Hanna

Horror writers can write about everything in the real world that a mainstream novelist can
plus the supernatural, which is the most fertile field for metaphor imaginable. ~ Bentley Little

Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn't trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he'd been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
"Stories aren't real," he told me shortly. "They don't feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding 'family' in the nearest gang."
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. "Write down the names of some books," she said. "Maybe we'll read them."
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young live ~ Terri Windling

The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way. ~ Hugh Lofting

This is apparently a little promotional ¶ where we're supposed to explain "how and why we came to" the subject of our GD series book (the stuff in quotations is the editor's words). The overall idea is to humanize the series and make the books and their subjects seem warmer and more accessible. So that people will be more apt to buy the books. I'm pretty sure this is how it works. The obvious objection to such promotional ¶s is that, if the books are any good at all, then the writers' interest and investment in their subjects will be so resoundingly obvious in the texts themselves that these little pseudo-intimate Why I Cared Enough About Transfinite Math and Where It Came From to Spend a Year Writing a Book About It blurblets are unnecessary; whereas, if the books aren't any good, it's hard to see how my telling somebody that as a child I used to cook up what amounted to simplistic versions of Zeno's Dichotomy and ruminate on them until I literally made myself sick, or that I once almost flunked a basic calc course and have seethed with dislike for conventional higher-math education ever since, or that the ontology and grammar of abstractions have always struck me as one of the most breathtaking problems in human consciousness - how any such stuff will help. The logic of this objection seems airtight to me. In fact, the only way the objection doesn't apply is if these ¶s are really nothing more than disguised ad copy, in which case I don't see why anyone reading them should ~ David Foster Wallace

I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness. ~ Edan Lepucki

To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes. ~ Akira Kurosawa

You may translate books of science exactly ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written. ~ Samuel Johnson

And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do! ~ David Almond

Don't write what you know - what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you - and interests you deeply - and your readers will catch fire at your words. ~ Valerie Sherwood

[On writing Jeeves and Wooster stories]:
You tell yourself that you can take Jeeves stories or leave them alone, that one more can't possibly hurt you, because you know you can pull up whenever you feel like it, but it is merely wish-full thinking. The craving has gripped you and there is no resisting it.
You have passed the point of no return. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

For I must write to The Times tonight, and save the world from sin. ~ A.P. Herbert

Writing derives from an accumulation of experience. It's as if you collect facts and observations over time, like a stone to stand on. From there, imagination takes over. ~ Harriet Doerr

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better. ~ William Faulkner

When you're writing, you're trying to find out something which you don't know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don't want to know, what you don't want to find out. But something forces you to anyway. ~ James A. Baldwin

Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out? ~ Holly Bourne

Although I now spend most of my time writing novels for teenagers and adults, 'readaloudability' is still a criterion I try to adhere to. ~ Mal Peet

In my twenties, it was so important for me to show people I had all these other books and these other sorts of writing in me, .. A lot of authors, if their first book is a success, they're terrified to write a second one. But in my case, since the first book wasn't considered a literary book, I was really determined to show people I could do other types of writing. ~ Evelyn Lau

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

If a man couldn't escape what he came from, we would most of us still be peasants in Old World hovels. But, if, having escaped or not, he wants in some way to know himself, define himself, and tries to do it without taking into account the thing he came from, he is writing without any ink in his pen. The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies that they were ever connected with him withers into half a man. ~ John Graves

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

For some, vampires are still firmly in the 'evil, scary' column. However, in recent decades, vampires also run the gamut from evil to morally ambiguous all the way to fangless and vegetarian. I think part of their appeal lies in their versatility. Vampires can be the villain, the hero, and everything in between, all depending on the writer's whim. You'll also never hear me say that anyone is doing vampires 'wrong' because unless a real vampire stands up and sets the record straight, it's anyone's game as a far as defining them in fiction. ~ Jeaniene Frost