Persuasive Writing Quotes

Good ideas ought not to be dressed up in bad prose. ~ Barbara Minto

The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown. ~ George Zebrowski

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art. ~ Isabel Allende

When writing, there are some scenes that are emotionally overwhelming. They completely overcome the author, and only when they do this can they cause a similar reaction in the reader.

Through this, the author gets to experience multiple lives. If a character's life flashes before their eyes, it flashes before the author's eyes too, and he or she remembers it as his or her own.

With reading, we get to live other lives vicariously, and this is doubly so with writing. It is like a lucid dream, where we guide the outcome. In this, we don't merely write *about* a character -- we momentarily *become* them, and walk as they walk, think as they think, and do as they do. When we return to our own life, we might return a little shaken, likely a little stronger, hopefully a little wiser.

What is certain is that we return better, because experiencing the lives of others makes us understand their aims and dreams, their fears and foils, the challenges and difficulties, and joys and triumphs, that they face. It helps us grow and empathise, and see all the little pictures that make up the bigger one we see from the omniscience of the narrator. ~ Dean F. Wilson

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking. ~ George Hillocks Jr.

If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit, because I know when I was younger I felt like authors were like wizards or something. Turns out they're total muggles. ~ John Green

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument. ~ Xavier Rudd

Writing is a Passion, Art is my Dreams, Crafting is something I Enjoy.

The day one stops learning is the day one stops living. ~ Carol Hopkins

Writing is a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it. ~ John Green

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living. ~ Harold Pinter

4091 East Olympic Boulevard proved to be a nondescript one-storey sandstone building of the sort you drive blithely by every day, knowing it's full of paper-pushers and clock-watchers, and nobody's in there writing a symphony or taming a lion or having an orgasm. ~ James K. Morrow

As a young victim of bullying and then, later, a vindictive perpetrator of violence myself, I've known both sides of this experience, and I tried very hard in the writing here to be as absolutely honest as I possibly could, to not romanticize myself or my past actions or cowardly inactions in any way. ~ Andre Dubus

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

To speak of "the rise of Protestantism" is to offer a controlling narrative that links these potentially disparate events as part of a greater, more significant movement. So persuasive was this emerging narrative that many of the reforming groups scattered across Europe realigned their sense of identity and purpose to conform to it. As these movements began to locate themselves on a historical and conceptual map, each came increasingly to identify itself in terms of what was perceived as a greater overarching movement. A ~ Alister E. McGrath

I'm sure that I'll never have another success like Harry Potter for the rest of my life, no matter how many books I write, and no matter whether they're good or bad. ~ J.K. Rowling

Happened to them. And the more confident they became, the more sensory details they added to their false memories ("the place smelled horrible").22 Researchers have created imagination inflation indirectly, too, merely by asking people to explain how an unlikely event might have happened. Cognitive psychologist Maryanne Garry finds that as people tell you how an event might have happened, it starts to feel real to them. Children are especially vulnerable to this suggestion.23 Writing turns a fleeting thought into a fact of history, and for Wilkomirski, writing down his memories confirmed his memories. "My illness showed me that it was time for me to write it all down for myself," said Wilkomirski, "just as it was held in my memory, to trace every hint all the way back."24 Just as he rejected the historians at Majdanek who challenged his ~ Carol Tavris

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible. ~ Mark Twain

There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; & that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.' (26 July 1922) ~ Virginia Woolf

I told him I wanted to major in creative writing and sit around in yoga pants and do nothing but write books eat ice cream every day. ~ Colleen Hoover

You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job ... These seeming amusements in fact become your 'style.' When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper. ~ William Zinsser

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

Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

Dryden was a highly prolific literary figure, a professional writer who was at the centre of all the greatest debates of his time: the end of the Commonwealth, the return of the monarch, the political and religious upheavals of the 1680s, and the specifically literary questions of neoclassicism opposed to more modern trends. He was Poet Laureate from 1668, but lost this position in 1688 on the overthrow of James II. Dryden had become Catholic in 1685, and his allegorical poem The Hind and the Panther (1687) discusses the complex issues of religion and politics in an attempt to reconcile bitterly opposed factions. This contains a well-known line which anticipates Wordsworth more than a century later: 'By education most have been misled … / And thus the child imposes on the man'. The poem shows an awareness of change as one grows older, and the impossibility of holding one view for a lifetime:

My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Followed false lights…

After 1688, Dryden returned to the theatre, which had given him many of his early successes in tragedy, tragi-comedy, and comedy, as well as with adaptations of Shakespeare.
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Dryden was an innovator, leading the move from heroic couplets to blank verse in drama, and at the centre of the intellectual debates of the Augustan age. He experimented with verse forms throughout his writing life until Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) ~ Ronald Carter

I see things beyond what other people see. I am always looking for hidden corners and closets of a life that I feel aren't explored either by the person who lived it or the people writing about it. ~ Melanie Benjamin

The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence
his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms
in short, his hereditary cowardice ... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies. ~ H.L. Mencken

I would argue that coffee has been far more important to literature than alcohol. ~ Joseph Finder

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse) ~ Eric S. Raymond

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place. ~ Louis L'Amour

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy. ~ William, Saroyan

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde, I want to do the wide sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling as well as the pastel dawns and twilights of Chesterton. All that is by way of example. As a matter of fact I am a professed literary thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Every credible scientist on earth says your products harm the environment. I recommend paying weasels to write articles casting doubt on the data. Then eat the wrong kind of foods and hope you die before the earth does. ~ Scott Adams

I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do. ~ Charles De Lint

I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing. ~ Andy Rooney

On the whole, stories don't write themselves. ~ Neil Gaiman

I was born on the same day as Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton: January 19. I am absolutely certain that this affects my writing in some way. ~ Eden Robinson

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are. ~ Philip Larkin

I've set the vast majority of my books in New England because that's where I live. I love this part of the country the gentle hills, the lush forests, the cycles of the seasons, the ocean, the quiet lakes and rivers that spread across the region. And, then of course, there's that Yankee spirit, which is a combination of optimism and responsibility, rugged individualism and a strong sense of community. I consider myself and my characters very lucky to live in New England. ~ Judith Arnold

The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself. ~ Fernando Torres

I'm a better writer than I am a singer, and I express myself easily through writing. ~ Rebecca Ferguson

But years hath done this wrong, To make me write too much, and live too long. ~ Samuel Daniel

Yeah, the main goal when I'm writing [movie scripts] is to entertain myself. It's supposed to be funny, but then a funny idea can be turned into something else. ~ Quentin Dupieux

Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike. ~ David Foster Wallace

You'll love Philadelphia," she said. "But watch out for the ladies who are putting on your shin-dig. There's a romance writing group near here in Erie, and let me just say - we've been called out to a few of their parties. Some of those chicks are decently hard-core. ~ K.C. Dyer