Writing Excellence Quotes

For excellence, the presence of others is always required. ~ Hannah Arendt

Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and ... read.
But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you've become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes. ~ Chila Woychik

In writing, as in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are associated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to weak judgments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend the taste or morals of mankind to separate delusive combinations, and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused. ~ Samuel Johnson

I want to explore and do things with excellence. I want to write songs that resonate with me and will resonate with a live audience. I'm exploring fresh sounds. ~ Anthony Evans

The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Write the words "The FIve Senses" on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can tack images, quotes, postcards, scraps of thoughts and ideas that will help remind you of you you are and what you're doing. ~ Dani Shapiro

All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as
equal with all men ... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to
discover to you. ~ Blaise Pascal

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end - as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary. ~ John Berendt

Sometimes at night
when the moon is almost
full and my hands go
numb from writing, I cleanse
myself of her poisoned love.
I welcome the water, the
inevitability of
death and embrace
the long painful road out
of love. ~ A.P. Sweet

I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny. ~ Alex Borstein

Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

You know that this vignette and that vignette belong side by side, you know that a certain turn of phrase you've been saving will probably work best within a given section of the narrative. As in a jazz performance, writing lives or dies by what's produced in that moment. But that moment is attended by long preparation. ~ Teju Cole

What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

For Saffron," it said in shaky old writing on the damaged base, and on the other side, "Saffy's angel."
Saffron, picking up the broken fragments one by one, said it didn't matter. She hugged Rose and Indigo and Caddy and Sarah, and said again and again that it didn't matter, it didn't matter at all. ~ Hilary McKay

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over 100 pounds. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing, or iron tools. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I stayed with him for three days, and he then asked: 'Do you know any craft by which to make your living?' I told him: 'I am a lawyer, a scientist, a scribe, a mathematician and a calligrapher.' 'There is no market for that kind of thing here,' he replied. 'No one in this city has any knowledge of science or of writing and their only concern is making money.' 'By God,' I said, 'I know nothing apart from what I have told you. ~ Anonymous

The only rule I have is to quit while it's still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it's going good. Then it's easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you'll get into a dead spell and you'll have trouble with it. ~ William Faulkner

When I was writing some of songs for the record in Galapagos it was the feeling of being there I wanted to evoke more than anything. I remember hearing all the parts of the songs in my mind when I was walking around over the lava fields. ~ Jonathan Meiburg

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Just remember, this is a collaborative effort. We don't have time for creative differences or outbreaks of artistic integrity. ~ Greg Cox

Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better. ~ S.J. Watson

It is possible to live well with dementia and write best-sellers 'like wot I do. ~ Terry Pratchett

I never had only one job. I was either playing ball or writing or doing TV or modeling. ~ Gabrielle Reece

Her gaze darted back to the computer screen. THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION. If she posted this, it needed to be real. She needed people to believe Spartan could come back. They needed to trust that he'd made it out of the ship. It couldn't just be fangirl to fangirl, writing Starveil AU's that never really happened. This would be the guerrilla warfare of character ships. The fans would have to reweave the details they had into a new explanation of those last seconds of film. They'd take no prisoners, leave no wounded fans behind. But, as in any war, that meant the intel behind the revolution had to stay secret for as long as possible.
Fandom had to believe. ~ Danika Stone

What I like writing about are people's relationships, not necessarily great big dramatic things but the smaller things in life and how they affect characters and challenge and change the people that they are. I do like a happy ending, so my books have to have a happy ending. ~ Penny Jordan

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Suddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this, and who else other people may be, and all that, it's so grimly brutal! ~ Robert Creeley

To Cecelia, the friend I needed as a child and found as an adult, thank you for finding me at just the right time - on my knees, ready to give up writing forever, and for holding my hand in the dark and showing me the way. ~ K.A. Reynolds

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice. ~ Patricia A. McKillip

There was a time when wen we did not form all our words as we do now, in writing on a page. There was a time when the word "&" was written with several distinct & separate letters. It seems madness now. But there it is, & there is nothing we can do about it.

Humanity learned to ride the rails, & that motion made us what we are, a ferromaritime people. The lines of the railsea go everywhere but from one place straight to another. It is always switchback, junction, coils around & over our own train-trails.

What word better could there be to symbolize the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than "&" itself? Where else does the railsea take us, but to one place & that one & that one & that one, & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than "&"?

An efficient route from where we start to where we end would make the word the tiniest line. But it takes a veering route, up & backwards, overshooting & correcting, back down again south & west, crossing its own earlier path, changing direction, another overlap, to stop, finally, a few hairs' width from where we began.

& tacks & yaws, switches on its way to where it's going, as we all must do. ~ China Mieville

I have always loved being behind the camera. I love how it sets you apart in a crowd, so that you can float at the edges, pausing only occasionally to capture a moment.
In its own way it's easier than writing. As a writer, I have to know people, to talk to them, to barge into silences with a dozen of those little lighthearted quips that lead up to a conversation. And even then, they're guarded around you. Nobody wants their drunken conversation written down somewhere.
Being a photographer is different. People come to you. They smile. They flirt. They make sure you see only their best side. Nobody wants to upset the camera. ~ Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

My pragmatic nature, my impatience, will most likely have me drunk on aged spirit by noon. ~ S.A. Tawks

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness. ~ William, Saroyan

People should love in the same way that they should write; insistently, fervently, forever. ~ R. YS Perez

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written
it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. ~ Mark Twain

When writing for children, it's important to keep in touch with our own inner child. What frightened them, made them happy, made them sad or angry? ~ C.J. Heck

I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia. ~ Richard Stallman

It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things
a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring
with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine
the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me. ~ Raymond Carver

I feel guilty because I want to act more than I want to write songs. I'm a person who likes to transition; I like to grow. ~ Ester Dean

The structure of a 'writing schedule' is only there as a frame. You provide the image, the emotion, and the sentiment in your own time. ~ Margaret Aranda

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: "Know thyself". Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other. ~ Alan Moore

Whether it's acting, directing or writing, I want to be involved in the film industry for the rest of my life. ~ Tom Felton

Nobody walks well first, nobody writes well first and nobody cooks well first. ~ Joel Salatin

A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson's biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It's first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing. ~ F. Sionil Jose

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with. ~ James Surowiecki

The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back. ~ James Mercer

Most composers and arrangers these days use computer programs and keyboards, but I'm one of those dinosaurs that still writes it down on score paper and still dreams it up in his ear first. ~ Phil Coulter

Writing poetry, which for me was then saying how I felt about this and that, didn't help me to understand the world I lived in. ~ Grace Paley

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject? ~ Slash Coleman

You can teach almost anyone determined to learn them the basics required to write sentences and paragraphs that say what you want them to say clearly and concisely. It's far more difficult to get people to think like a writer, to give up conventional habits of mind and emotion. You must be able to step inside your character's skin, and at the same time to remain outside the dicey circumstances you have maneuvered her into. ~ Anne Bernays