Signposting In Writing Quotes

An absolute joy to read - it stimulates and engages. Westney is asking new questions not addressed elsewhere ... and you will be drawn in by the author's inviting, yet quietly compelling style. ~ Patricia Powell

It feels like flying and landing to all the continents of the world with the use of my imaginary paper that can floats in the air. ~ Alexina Benavidez

Monsoon Love is a love story with a few comic twists. The idea for this story came to me when I went into the local town of Pokhara with a friend to buy his son a birthday present. We had just arrived at the shops when a heavy down pour began, and as we had arrived on his motorbike and didn't have raincoats or umbrellas so we had to wait for the rain to stop. We were standing under a awning watching the street while we waited, and I noticed this very beautiful young woman walk past me dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled half up her legs, but the way she held her umbrella made it impossible to see her face, though with the nice body she had her face must have been just as lovely. Then I though, imagine some guy stuck working in an office, and seeing a view like that every day of the same woman, and falling in love with her despite not seeing her face. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

Because every time I think of starships skipping across the galaxy, I imagine Albert Einstein in a policeman's uniform, writing up a ticket. ~ John Scalzi

I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage. ~ Dan Chaon

Many people have been protesting against what they describe as censorship on Goodreads. I disgree. In fact, I would like to say that I welcome the efforts that Goodreads management is making to improve the deplorably low quality of reviewing on this site.
Please, though, just give me clearer guidelines. I want to know how to use my writing to optimize Amazon sales, especially those of sensitive self-published authors. This is a matter of vital importance to me, and outweighs any possible considerations of making my reviews interesting, truthful, creative or entertaining. ~ Manny Rayner

I often find that when a ruthless editor forces me to trim an article to fit into a certain number of column-inches, the quality of my prose improves as if by magic. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of many other virtues in writing. ~ Steven Pinker

If I have enough ego to say I'm a writer, a director, a producer, and an actor, I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work. ~ Peter Fonda

I found that I was much more interested in writing and that I didn't like the illustrating at all. I had always been the hardest on myself when I drew and painted. I am not hard on myself when I write. I like what I write, so it is a much happier process. ~ Gail Carson Levine

One of the things I've always thought is a drag in so many period adaptations is that they are always buttoned up to the neck in so many clothes all the time. I'm always looking for excuses to get them out of their clothes. ~ Andrew Davies

I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head ... that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft ... it's second nature. ~ Janis Ian

the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These thing ~ G.K. Chesterton

Well I've been locking myself up in my house for some time now Reading and writing and reading and thinking and searching for reasons and missing the seasons The Autumn, the Spring, the Summer, the snow ~ Colleen Hoover

I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at. ~ John Grisham

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions. ~ John Updike

I don't like to be challenged in the way that often happens, where somebody writes something and then you, as an actor, are expected to really make it up in your imagination. That's not really an ideal way of working. ~ Hugh Dancy

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [ ... ] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [ ... ] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [ ... ] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work. ~ Fran Lebowitz

I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody. ~ Isabel Allende

Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. ~ Henrik Ibsen

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy. ~ Bob Shacochis

I discovered then that the world I was living in was so much more interesting than the world I was capable of conceiving. ~ Nora Ephron

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. ~ Melanie Martinez

I freely admit that I took great license in writing 'The Dark Queen,' more so than my other historical romance novels. This is largely because I viewed the book as a fantasy novel as much as an historical. I do feel that writers should strive for as much accuracy as possible but, in the end, remember that we are writing fiction. ~ Susan Carroll

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television. ~ Johnny Cash

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex and it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. ~ Annie Dillard

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

If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares? ~ Charles Stross

I don't decide where I live. My wife decides. She's a curator of contemporary art, and she works at an art museum, so we go wherever she has a job. All basements look the same, so I can write from whatever basement I happen to be living in. ~ John Green

I want each character to be as unique as possible. I want them to reflect something of who they are in the way that they move and in how their bodies work. That was foremost in my head when I was writing Salvage: I wanted every gesture, every little movement, to really carry meaning and communicate meaning to the reader. I was very conscious of that when I was writing. ~ Jesmyn Ward

At this moment, the story in his head was perfect. He also knew from experience that it would degenerate the second he started typing, because such was the nature of writing. ~ Sara Gruen

Those who read in a second language write and spell better in that language. ~ Stephen D. Krashen

I was always the type of drug user that I had no moderation. When I was smoking and drinking, I was full on smoking and drinking. And I am also the type of drug user where I do smoke and drink, there's no creativity in terms of my writing process. I would just stare at the paper for hours and nothing would get done. ~ Ryan Lewis

Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others. ~ Elizabeth Drew

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing. ~ Haruki Murakami

Fallon affected my body in weird ways. But only because she's different, I told myself. ~ Penelope Douglas

The word 'NO' is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

There are certain things that I will do viscerally to affect people emotionally, with speed changes and sound, and various other things. Sure there are links; the same kind of sensibilities went into it and I worked on writing that script as well so there was an emphasis on a minimalisation of dialogue as far as possible, to focus on the visual and to put it in another language, of course. ~ Mel Gibson

I am proud to be a Turk, and to write in Turkish about Turkey - and to have been translated into about 40 languages. But I don't want to politicize things by dramatizing them. ~ Orhan Pamuk