Onn Writing Quotes

It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut - it's the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts. ~ Stephen King

There's more mystical nonsense written about the process of writing than almost anything. Inspiration, genius, "the muse." So I want to lay out one huge, comforting, wonderful fact: the more you write, the better you get at it. Writing is like a forehand or driving a car or playing guitar. Practice makes you better.

That's not to say inspiration and genius don't exist. Not everyone can become Tolstoy through hard work. What it means is that, wherever you start, you can improve. And the way to do it is to write a lot.

I mentioned at the start of this piece that I've published eight books. When I flip through the first one now, I can't believe it ever made it onto shelves. I see so many flaws and problems in it that I'm amazed. The reason is that I've written hundreds of thousands of words between since then. As long as you produce a little something every day, every week, in time, invisibly, you'll get better. Trailing behind every successful writer are a million words that never saw the light of day. Sometimes it takes five million words. The most important piece of writing advice anyone can give or get is simple, and therefore can seem uninteresting, but it's true: just keep writing. ~ Charles Finch

My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics. ~ Esperanza Spalding

Songwriting is never one thing. I've spent as long as three months writing a song. Other times I've done it in twenty minutes. ~ Greg Lake

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.
Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it.
A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer. ~ James Salter

Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion. ~ Eudora Welty

It was failing part of my Ph.D. that led me into novel-writing. By then I was 29, had remarried and had a second baby. It struck me that I'd lost my path in life and I felt frustrated. That's when I started to write. ~ Kate Atkinson

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained. ~ Toni Morrison

My dear," he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, "it's been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young. ~ Willa Cather

I'm not the fastest reader or writer but occasionally I'll write things down just so I don't forget them. ~ Thighpaulsandra

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends. ~ Khaled Hosseini

I wish to continue reading. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard. ~ Teresa Mummert

We never fit in completely to [the punk] scene because we were writing love songs that were heartfelt and endearing. Some of the punks didn't know what to make of us, but I finally realized that was what made us punk. We sang what we meant, from the heart, and didn't worry about what anyone was going to think. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal. ~ John C. Hawkes

I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series. ~ Sarah Mlynowski

It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries;
but very often I think what keeps a writer from finding the words is that she grasps at them too soon, hurries, grabs. She doesn't wait for the wave to come in and break. She wants to write because she's a writer; she wants to say this, and tell people that, and show people something else - things she knows, her ideas, her opinions, her beliefs, important things - but she doesn't wait for the wave to come and carry her beyond all the ideas and opinions, to where you cannot use the wrong word. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read. ~ Gloria Steinem

Only the blank page need never apologize. ~ Marty Rubin

Writing voice isn't as much a function of thinking as it is something that eludes definition and therefore assimilation. The more artful flavors of prose are more often a function of intuition and imitation fused with heart and wit and delivered with a strong does of lyric sensibility. It ~ Larry Brooks

Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes. ~ Sara Sheridan

Writing is the painting of the voice. ~ Voltaire

Perhaps for many Japanese, autobiographical fiction writing is life. We are a people expected to complement, to harmonize, to anticipate one another's needs. All without a single spoken clue.

And the reason is that he's in training to be a writer. Observing detail, understanding irony, interpreting motivation. Hiro knows that acts are symbolic. The hard sour fruit offered too soon in its season carries a message. He has made an error in the timing of his visit. He has inconvenienced that family.

This is the Japanese way. Cogitating on inner meaning. Revealing ourselves and perceiving others through carefully crafted scenes.

Writing our endless I-stories. ~ Lydia Minatoya

I have spent 20
years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and
scream, that takes 30 seconds. ~ Andrea Dworkin

I like English, and I like writing essays, and that kind of stuff. ~ Abigail Breslin

There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control. ~ Steven Knight

Should he make a note? He felt for the smooth shape of his pen in his pocket. 'Theme for a novel: The contrary pull ... " No. If this notion were real, he needn't make a note. A notion on which a note had to be made would be stillborn anyway, his notebook was a parish register of such, born and dead on the same page. Let it live if it can. ("Novelty") ~ John Crowley

Once I start writing, I can't stop. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A critic knows more than the author he criticizes, or just as much, or at least somewhat less. ~ Henry Edward Manning

I definitely write about a lot of dreamy, surreal stuff. I do end up going to a surreal world with my music, but I also like the idea of there being really real stuff as well. ~ Ellie Goulding

WRITING THROUGH FIRE IS AN AUTHOR'S JOURNEY. ~ Victoria A. Young

We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us. ~ Vladimir Lenin

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem. ~ Marilyn Hacker

A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age. ~ Ram Dass

Hotel Du Lac
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy. ~ Anita Brookner

Writing a novel proved to be the hardest, most self-analyzing task I had ever attempted, far worse than an autobiography: and its rewards were greater than I expected. ~ Dick Francis

Words? I tell you not to write me letters; I command you. Is it not enough to want you so in vain, but you send me what evokes you here before me
this paper, all along whose lines your hand has lain? ~ Anne Reeve Aldrich

Some writers just write about their own lives. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have a really boring life. A quiet, boring life so no one wants to write a biography. I'm the only writer in history only to have one wife, for instance. ~ T.C. Boyle

It's just like an idea, like a chorus, and then we just jam on it - it happens in loads of different ways. The best songs I find always come from the subconscious, like when you don't think. Not to be pretentious about it, but usually songs just blurt out rather than thinking about it. I never write lyrics and then do a song, I find that really hard - that's like a real skill. ~ Luke Pritchard

Writing has such a power for expressionEven when you can't talk with no one else in the whole world you can talk to your paper. Your feelings whether good, bad or indifferent. We call it despojo in Spanish, which means to be able to get rid of all this agony, weight inside of you. It brings clarity. ~ Piri Thomas

Writing is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes. ~ Jasper Fforde

It is my greatest wish that victims of paranormal attack are treated with the respect and compassion they deserve, and that by writing this book, it will encourage others to come forward and share their stories also. ~ Caroline Mitchell

Writers that are pouring their soul out for the world to see, will cast a perfect reflection of themselves in their work. ~ Jason E. Hodges