Writing Affirmation Quotes

There's really only one good writing habit: You must write constantly. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. ~ John Steinbeck

Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history. ~ Terry Eagleton

She peered out after a moment; he was staring fixedly across the cut, with his gun resting on his left forearm. He raised it abruptly and fired twice more, waited, shrugged, and then trudged off. Quietly sat watching him in utter amazement and disgust. Far off on the hillside she could discern the jerky motions of a rock-squirrel kicking and kicking its life away. The man had hit it with his first bullet, and had fired again as it writhed there. It was wanton; it was useless. Quietly felt no particular pity for the animal; she was not a sentimentalist, and had a scale of values for the lower orders. What offended her was the waste of a life, of powder, even of skill - the skill of the man himself and that of the precision workers who had made his weapon. He had not wanted the creature for fur or flesh, but had as his only apparent desire an affirmation of the evident fact that he was bigger and stronger and more intelligent than a chipmunk. Enter civilization she would, but not in the company of this pervert. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

When I taught writing classes to psychiatric patients, I met people whose stories of manic highs and immobilizing lows appeared to be textbook descriptions of classic bipolar disorder. I met other patients who had been diagnosed with myriad disorders. No doctor seemed to agree about what they actually suffered from. ~ Siri Hustvedt

It is difficult to disturb the common usage of Korean that is bent to the perspective of a male-oriented society. Korean society is based on both a politics and history that have been disguised as a solid society of solid male poems, a solid written language, fixed rules of how to write literature, and a narrative language. ~ Kim Hyesoon

As I read my poems aloud, I paid still more attention to sound in my writing. One morning as I revised, I set down a word that I knew was not right, and I heard myself think: But I can say it so that it's right. Immediately, I knew that I had understood one of the hazards of reading aloud. Performance can paper over bad writing, or substitute for the best language. Performance is a problem, and most performance poets or slammers are actors or standup comedians and not poets; we never hear a line break and seldom a new metaphor. There are other problems with the popularity of the poetry reading, but largely the reading has been good for poetry because poets watch their own poems come back to them on the faces of listeners. One addresses not only the Muse but actual people. ~ Donald Hall

I'm proud to be a writer. I'm doing the job all my heroes did. ~ Carla H. Krueger

I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion. ~ Hunter Hayes

I would never write something that made me uncomfortable. I'm not sure it's even possible. ~ Lori Foster

The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up. ~ Judith Krantz

His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings. ~ James Joyce

When a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was ... this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art. ~ Orhan Pamuk

As an independent artist it is so easy to get caught up in websites, social media, merchandise, when I am going to put out an EP, fining a producer, finding a studio to record in and you have to remember at the end of the day you should be writing music. ~ Tyler Hilton

Some weeks there's no writing, and some weeks are full of writing. ~ Ann Packer

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me. ~ Hallie Ephron

My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book
everything I like
trying to evoke some of the decadence ... Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires
they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.
I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection
the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in. ~ Holly Black

I knew that I wanted to be a singer/songwriter when I was much younger and, um, I've been able to, you know, to realize that dream and I'm very pleased with that ... I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry ... Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion-very powerful emotions. ~ Annie Lennox

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting. ~ Werner Herzog

What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the strength of its style, just as the earth, suspended in the void, depends on nothing external for its support. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Guys didn't like their cars messed with. And I didn't like being messed with, so I guessed we were even. ~ Penelope Douglas

The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Writing was the antijob, the fuck you to all jobs, her claim on her autonomy, what kept her feral and free. ~ Michelle Tea

I write because I love how I feel to have written. ~ Carol Lynch Williams

I write in the morning, I walk in the afternoon and I read in the evening. It's a very easy, lovely life. ~ Margaret Forster

A migraine is the cockblock of writing. ~ Don Roff

He's been spoiled 'til salt won't save him. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

I'm looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing
writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like. ~ Kathy Acker

The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has been so much read and so variously translated as Euclid. ~ Augustus De Morgan

The easiest and full of fun way to teach your children alphabet!!. Introducing "The Grocery Cart Spree Writing ABCs" story book by Doris Hankamer. ~ Doris Birdwell Hankamer

In the world of your story, your outline is like the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, your characters are all Atheists. ~ Jefferson Smith

The image is an example of how horror writers view our world. A view that is far from the norm. Their writing always seeking that visceral fear in us all. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

If I don't already know a song's chord progression, I'll stop writing and try to figure it out. I can occasionally listen to unstructured, amelodic ambient music, but I prefer no music. I don't need silence - I can write just about anywhere - but music is a major distraction. ~ F. Paul Wilson

Character development is vital when writing a strong story. Weak characters make for weak stories. ~ Beem Weeks

He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's just writing about things, feelings, not that we're dark or depressed ... just as much as anyone else is. ~ Layne Staley

Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing. ~ Martin Amis

I can recommend wearing blue mascara whilst writing. I'm telling you, it really adds something. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

The poetry of music composes each generation of Americans' autobiographical memories. Language and music represent two rotaries of the revolving and evolving wheels that we employ to internalize the axis of identification. Music plays a profound role in the definitive stages of most people's lives. Reminiscent of the sounds and smells that flavored our youth, musical intonations organize our personal memories into temporal time sequence. Modulation of musical memories comprises an important quotient in people's autographical memory system. If we listen to enough music, its pitch, tone, timbre, and cadence eventually seeps into our unconsciousness. The lilt of music becomes a portal through which we perceive, feel, and experience worldly inflections and how we synthesize swirling emotions. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Freedom of discussion is in England little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury of twelve shopkeepers think it expedient should be said or written. ~ A. V. Dicey

My method of writing is to take the most basic kind of line and improvise on it. After all, I am the child of the culture which created Jazz. ~ Leon Forrest

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval. ~ Joyce Maynard

I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there. ~ John Darnielle

I think that I have grown a lot as an artist. I have been writing about my experiences of love and overcoming the struggles that I have faced in the music industry. I have so much more to tell my fans, and I know so much more about myself. It is crazy how much I have grown over these past years. ~ Jessica Sanchez

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. ~ George Orwell

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart. ~ Edward Abbey

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it. ~ Diane Cilento

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
~ Anita Brookner