Writer S Techniques Quotes

Alliteration seems to offend people. ~ Dean Koontz

Jesus Christ is not a cosmic errand boy. I mean no disrespect or irreverence in so saying, but I do intend to convey the idea that while he loves us deeply and dearly, Christ the Lord is not perched on the edge of heaven, anxiously anticipating our next wish. When we speak of God being good to us, we generally mean that he is kind to us. In the words of the inimitable C. S. Lewis, "What would really satisfy us would be a god who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.'" You know and I know that our Lord is much, much more than that.

One writer observed: "When we so emphasize Christ's benefits that he becomes nothing more than what his significance is 'for me' we are in danger. . . . Evangelism that says 'come on, it's good for you'; discipleship that concentrates on the benefits package; sermons that 'use' Jesus as the means to a better life or marriage or job or attitude--these all turn Jesus into an expression of that nice god who always meets my spiritual needs. And this is why I am increasingly hesitant to speak of Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. As Ken Woodward put it in a 1994 essay, 'Now I think we all need to be ~ Robert L. Millet

Hisako Arato...
... is an expert at medicinal cooking!"
MEDICINAL COOKING
Based on both Western and Eastern medicinal practices, it melds together food and pharmaceutical science.
It is a culinary specialty that incorporates natural remedies and Chinese medicine into recipes to promote overall dietary health.
"Besides the four traditional natural remedies, I also added Jiāng Huáng, Dà huí Xiāng, and Xiāo huí Xiāng...
... to create my own original 'Medicinal Spice Mix.'
Steeping them in water for an hour drew out their medicinal properties. Then I added the mutton and various vegetables and boiled them until they were tender. Some Shaoxing wine and a cilantro garnish at the end gave it a strong, refreshing fragrance. "
"That's right! Now that you mention it, there's a whole lot of overlap between medicinal cooking and curry. The medicinal herbs Jiāng Huáng, Dà huí Xiāng, and Xiāo huí Xiāng are commonly called turmeric, star anise and fennel! All three of those are spices any good curry's gotta have!"
"By basing her dish on those spices, she was able to tie her medicinal cooking techniques into the curry. That makes this a dish that only she could create!"
"Yes. This is my version of a Medicinal Curry...
It's called 'Si wu Tang Mutton Curry'!"
"I can feel it! I can feel the healing energies flowing through my body!"
"Delicious! The spices highlight the strong, robust flavor of the mutton perfectly! And the mild s ~ Yuto Tsukuda

Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. ~ Carol S. Dweck

Where writers are from is one of the world' s most boring topics. Where we're born, gender or race, wealth or poverty - those are the things we spend time talking about. Stop trying to label me. I'm a writer. Worry about whether I'm any good! ~ M. J. Hyland

Other countries, such as Israel, successfully employ behavior detection techniques at their airports, but the bloated, ineffective bureaucracy of TSA has produced another security failure for U.S. transportation systems. ~ John Mica

Character isn't something that magically appears simply by virtue of having a birthday and a describable physical identity; it is something that is built by action and error, out of anxiety and a longing that compels great efforts in the face of eternal hopelessness. A character in a story fights to get what s/he wants, just as the dramatic writer must fight to penetrate his or her own stubborn habits, prejudices and expectations, to get to the heart of the story. Drama builds character - that's why it exists, both inside and outside the screenplay. ~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, be so smart ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased. ~ William S. Burroughs

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. ~ William S. Burroughs

When the ink runs dry, you're most likely writing at the wrong angle. ~ Carolyn Shields

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] ~ Hilary Mantel

If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead. ~ V.S. Naipaul

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally. ~ V.S. Naipaul

I'm thought to be a tough writer, but I'm really a softie. ~ V.S. Naipaul

If you become a writer you'll be trying to describe the ?Thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across. ~ C.S. Lewis

A true writer has a moral duty to uplift humanity. ~ Debasish Mridha

Never underestimate a writer's vanity, especially that of a mediocre writer. (The Angel's Game) ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

How do you paint a writer's block?
Just fill it with fifty shades of black. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot. ~ John Gardner

I tell him getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to com. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later we'll figure out the right order. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well. ~ V.S. Naipaul

I once told a very serious writer/poet I knew about how obsessed I was with various women's lives. I think I was talking about Vivien Leigh at the time, as I was working on a book dealing with former screen legends, that I have since abandoned. Or perhaps the mad wives. I don't know. This poet was very serious, very pure. Derrida in the AM. Pronouncing his name correctly. That sort of thing. She fixed me with some look - this was maybe 7 years ago - and said - more than a bit dismissingly - oh, you're very interested with lives. Or maybe she said: Oh, you're very interested in these women's lives. And I said, yes, I guess I am. I remember feeling guilty - like this wasn't a writerly thing to be interested in, the subject of others' lives. That this was gossip. That being unliterary, somehow. This devouringness. I have since realized that most of the works I'm interested in, are about absolute obsession with other people's lives, often real-people's lives, and these works become unserious biographies, avant-garde acts of gossip, while still working within the structure of the novel. ~ Kate Zambreno

Writing is all about tents: sometimes you're competent, sometimes you're eloquetent. ~ Kevin Focke

Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. ("Mad House") ~ Richard Matheson

Do not make the writer stand behind a podium. Anything but. A podium reeks of the lecture hall. A music stand, on the other hand, is nicely minimal and lends the writer - who usually needs all the help s/he can get - a musician's second-hand cool-factor. ~ Lynn Coady

If I want to read S.J. Perelman's Chicken Inspector No. 23 for the third time instead of some anguished, politically correct saga of a girl growing up in a trailer park in Kingman, Arizona, with an alcoholic mother who makes her straighten her naturally curly hair and won't let her date a Navajo boy or pursue her goal of becoming (naturally) a writer, I will. And I will laugh like a lunatic while doing it. ~ Mel White

Maybe the real problem wasn't that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn't afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers.

It might mean taking people's lives into her hands–her own life, her friends', even her father's or mother's. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold. ~ L.L. Barkat

I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier. And that doesn't seem fair. I mean, I've been doing it so surely I should be getting better at it, at least a little bit blasé... And it seems to be working absolutely the opposite. This book [Big Brother] I had no confidence in the entirety of its composition, and I only decided I liked it when I finished the very final draft. This means I'm in a state of semi-misery for a long time. And I can't blithely seem either that's some little game I'm playing with myself because, you know, you can easily come along and you don't like what's you're writing for good reason. Right? So, yeah, it's very anxious making, I don't think it's so much the becoming a little more successful, I think it's becoming slightly more aware of how much has already been written, and just becoming less self-impressed as the years go by. More impressed with some people who are better than I am, but... It doesn't wow me that I can write a sentence any more. It has to be a really good sentence. And... I think that's what potentially leads to paralysis in late career, is a kind of killing humility.


Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2013 ~ Lionel Shriver

In terms of identity? I'm a commercial fantasy writer, looking to entertain my audience with fantastical tales that mix history with myth and magic. That's something humans have been doing for a very long time, and I like being part of a long tradition of storytelling, whether that's ancient tales shared around a campfire or modern podcasts.
...
I'm currently editing a scene that involves winged lions and smoke-conjured armor, so I'm not certain I'm the best writer to ask about truth. But that being said, words and stories have great power and I think setting a scene that pulls from the real world but is set in a fictional one can cause readers to reassess and question things in a way they might not have otherwise. ~ S.A. Chakraborty

In 1925 Woolf began an affair with Sackville-West, who was married to Harold Nicolson, the diplomat and writer, and the development of their close relationship, which does not seem to have undermined either woman's marriage, coincided with Woolf 's most productive years as a writer. ~ Jane Goldman

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. ("Advance Notice") ~ Richard Matheson

No man can stay forever young unless he is a writer. ~ Alamvusha

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading. ~ V.S. Naipaul

If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write. ~ S.E. Hinton

The old writer couldn't write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. ~ William S. Burroughs

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death. ~ Philip Sington

When I was a child, an angel came to say,
A true friend is coming my warrior to sweep you away,
It won't be easy the path because it leads through hell,
But if you're faithful, it will be the greatest story to tell,
You will move God's daughters to a place of hope,
Your story will teach everyone there is nothing they can't cope,
You will suffer a lot, but not one tear will you waste,
Because for all that you do for me, you will be graced,
For I am bringing you someone that wants to travel your trail,
Someone you already met when you passed through heaven's veil,
A warrior, a friend that whispers your heart's song,
Someone that will run with you and pull your spirit along,
Don't you see the timing was love's fated throw,
Because I put you both there to help one another grow,
I am the writer of all great stories your chapters were written by me,
You suffered, you cried because I needed you to see,
That your faith in my ending goes far beyond two,
It was going to change more hearts than both of you knew,
So hush my child and wait for my loving hand,
The last chapter is not written and still in the sand,
It is up to you to finish, before the tide washes it away,
All that is in your heart, I've put there for you to say,
This is not about winning, loss or pain,
I made you the way you are because true love stories are insane,
I wrote you in heaven as I sat on its s ~ Shannon L. Alder

I learned from # Hemingway that you could be a # writer and get away with it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Anyone can write but not everyone can crystallize that perfect moment which can make a heart skip a beat and dig deep into one's soul. - Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo' s Quotes ~ Elizabeth E. Castillo

A Writer is a writer, no matter what s/he writes. ~ Gabriella Slade

Every bloody mark had assassinated my writing along the way. ~ Jazz Feylynn

The dichotomy of the gun-toting, substance-abusing queer seeking spiritual refuge might strike some as anticlimactic. But William Burroughs was not what he appeared to be to many of his fans. The work which so many revere as biblical texts in the church of addiction were always seen by the writer himself as cautionary rather than visionary. ~ William S. Burroughs

They told me I've got writer's cramp. So is that better than the block? ~ Joyce Rachelle

Unfortunately, many people suffer from BPS - Blank Page Syndrome. Let's face it: starting to write is scary. Seeing the cursor blinking at you on that bright white screen, realizing that you now have to come up with three or ten or twenty pages of text all on your own - it's enough to give anyone a major case of writer's block! ~ Stefanie Weisman

Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle. ~ Leonard S. Marcus

If I could split myself into five people, I would still be behind on my writing schedule. I see now why James Patterson cloned himself so many times. ~ Peter James West

Wrestle with your thoughts until you get them on the page. Nobody can read them until you've written them down. ~ Peter James West