Lyrical Writing Quotes

But faith betrays sometimes. Faith has fluidity.
Faith evolves like her machine-learning-models, self-correcting from previous experiences. ~ Misba

THE STORIES WE TELL fearlessly explores the textures of the human heart, finding a path toward hope through a Savannah that is jagged with class issues, faith misused, and broken trust. Henry loses you in a landscape peopled with secret keepers, storytellers and liars, and proves that in the end, love is the only reliable compass. This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry - lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness - plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night. ~ Joshilyn Jackson

So you want to know all about me, Who
I am
What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted
the face
you see? what made me despise the girl
in the mirror
enough to transform her, turn her into a stranger,
only not. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Knock the bullshit off. Love her like crazy, endlessly, stripped of reserve and preservation. Be out of our fucking minds with love, lust and longing. Belonging. Knock on the door of uncertainty and bounce in anticipation of not knowing what resides behind it. Love whatever comes our way because it's part of us. Love every ugly word and beautiful sigh. ~ Pella Grace

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about. ~ Maynard James Keenan

I've always been a fan of plain writing. I hate metaphor-laden, heavily larded, lyrical writing. ~ Hank Azaria

One lives by memory . . . and not by truth. ~ Igor Stravinsky

I wanted to do Playboy to get across the same ideas I'm singing and writing about these days. It's all about proving that a woman can defy stereotypes. ~ Jody Watley

A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one. ~ John Steinbeck

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Writing as a creative art flourishes only when there are no rules. Rules stifle you from entering the silent and forbidden spaces where the core of the story is waiting to be revealed. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

They say to just write about what's happening in your backyard because that's where you find the most creativity. It's in the DNA of the show. There's no question. ~ Mitchell Hurwitz

For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities. ~ Plutarch

He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unsuccessful people carry their goals around in their head like marbles rattling around in a can, and we say a goal that is not in writing is merely a fantasy. ~ Darren Hardy

Games are not about being told things. If you want to tell people things, write a book or make a movie. Games are dialogues - and dialogue requires both parties to take the floor once in a while ~ Warren Spector

Vulnerability has a strength of its own. ~ William Zinsser

How much better life seemed to me now that it seemed susceptible of being illuminated, taken out of the shadows, restored from our ceaseless falsification of it to the truth of what it was, in short, realized in a book! How happy the writer of a book like that would be, I thought, what a labour awaited him! ~ Marcel Proust

You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. ~ Mike Carey

I suppose most writers are following Twain's advice to tackle what they know, and my own readings habits drew me to writers who seemed to be writing honestly from their own experiences, whether they presented it in the guise of fiction or not. ~ Kevin Keck

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it. ~ David Guterson

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
All of them?
Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. ~ Margaret Atwood

The ordeal is part of the commitment
Esquire Interview 10/10 ~ Philip Roth

If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its
laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people
most of the time. ~ George Gerbner

I wrote poetry in middle school and high school and even through college. It was bad. I just don't think I'm very good at writing poetry. I mean, the distillation, I think, is hard for me, but I love poetry. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening. ~ Allen Ginsberg

I've found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I've been writing about. ~ Neil Diamond

To get a good paper written, you only have to rewrite a good draft ~ Söhnke Ahrens

I think anyone who has had a fight and who's a very good observer of the situation and people's behavior is capable of writing a fight. But you do start thinking about writing during the fights that you have with your partner. ~ Julie Delpy

Eventually I'll stop writing about you and it'll be bittersweet. Not because I'm not in love with you, but because I'll just love you. ~ Dominic Riccitello

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot ... ~ John Gardner

I can't become naked for everybody. It's never going to be possible for the person to write the whole story completely, so I find bits of myself, bits of what I think in some articles. And I don't give lip service to journalists. I never make them feel comfortable. I say, "It's your job to make the story." ~ Rei Kawakubo

Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in. ~ Joss Whedon

If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off. ~ John Irving

But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create. ~ Patricia Cornwell

The cheetah. Ate. My finger." The girl looks at each of us."That's what you're telling me? That Jaxon's Pandora ate the pinkie from my right hand? My writing hand?"
"To be fair, he won it from M-4. ~ Victoria Scott

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it. ~ Thomas Perry

The morning interviews were always the hardest, hung-over, trying to get the beer down. No, I have no idea why I am a writer. No, my writing has no particular meaning that I know of. Celine? Oh sure. Why not? Do I like women? Well, I'd rather fuck most of them than live with them. What do I think is important? Good wine, good plumbing and to be able to sleep late in the mornings. Are you really disturbing me? Of course you are. Do you expect me to start lying at the age of 58? Buy me a drink. ~ Charles Bukowski

I actually write more on guitar than I do on piano. ~ Norah Jones

If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men
you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead. ~ Thomas Merton

Your life should always come with hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. ~ A.D. Posey

I hear you don't write any more," he says ...
"Not true," I inform him. "You should see the margins of my student papers."
"Not the same as writing a book though, right?"
"Almost identical," I assure him. "Both go largely unread. ~ Richard Russo

Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen. ~ Russell T. Davies

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically.
A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.
[From a 1986 Fangoria interview] ~ James Cameron

The way to write well is to live intensely. ~ Virginia Woolf