Writing Guide Quotes

Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Rules are there for a reason. You are only allowed to break them if you are a master. If
you're not a master, don't confuse your ignorance with creativity or style. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing ... ~ Lois Wyse

If I know I will be working with someone and they are not keen with writing with a girl, I like to be non-threatening and cool so they will trust me. It's a thought process of who work and how I want to present myself. ~ Bonnie McKee

Writing for publication is an art, a craft, and a business, so you need to develop skill sets in multiple areas. You need to learn how to be a marketer just as much as you need to get past your influences and develop your unique prose voice. And you can't do it alone. You need a strong emotional support system to help cope with the frustrations and setbacks. ~ Brian Hodge

Everything comes out of smoke and mist and nothingness, a mystical happening… ~ Joan Rivers

The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we've
already achieved them. ~ Denis Waitley

In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury. ~ Tom Robbins

I've published one book before, and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany, about fitness. ~ Franka Potente

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me. ~ Amelie Nothomb

Really, whatever I was seeking and looking into in those days like creative arts, chant, the muse being in touch with the muse for poetry and writing and music. It's all part of the spirit and if we look particularly at Hinduism and Buddhism, the tantric stream of those traditions totally embraces all aspects of human life and life on this world. ~ Surya Das

I start with characters, and then I start writing, and then, if I'm lucky, things start to happen. ~ Susan Choi

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The artist Paul Klee described drawing a picture as taking a line for a walk. I have borrowed his words to explain my approach to writing; when I write a novel it is like I am taking a thought for a walk. ~ Aminatta Forna

Where conflicts arise between workers and bosses, between the rights of one class and the interests of the other, the machinery of the law is typically used as a weapon against the workers. Even where the law is contrary to the demands of powerful corporations, the police often act not from principle or legal obligation, but according to the needs of the ruling class. This tendency shouldn't surprise us, if we remember the lengths to which the cops have gone in the defense of White supremacy, even as laws and policies have changed. With class, as with race, it is the status quo that the police act to preserve and the interests of the powerful that they seek to defend, not the rule of law or public safety. The law, in fact, has been a rather weak guide for those who are meant to enforce it. ~ Kristian Williams

Writing is hard for everybody except fools. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past. ~ Deborah Norville

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. ~ Haruki Murakami

I've never written a fiction before about real people ... I read everything that I could find by people who met them and tried to get some impression of them, but as always when you write fiction, even if you have completely fictitious characters, you start by thinking of what is plausible, what would they say, what would they be likely to do, what would they be likely to think. At some point, if it is every going to come to life, the characters seem to take over and start speaking themselves, and it happened with [COPENHAGEN]. ~ Michael Frayn

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood. ~ Malcolm Cowley

Asking a writer why they like to write {in the theoretical sense of the question} is like asking a person why they breathe. For me, writing is a natural reflex to the beauty, the events, and the people I see around me. As Anais Nin put it, "We write to taste life twice." I live and then I write. The one transfers to the other, for me, in a gentle, necessary way. As prosaic as it sounds, I believe I process by writing. Part of the way I deal with stressful situations, catty people, or great joy or great trials in my own life is by conjuring it onto paper in some way; a journal entry, a blog post, my writing notebook, or my latest story. While I am a fair conversationalist, my real forte is expressing myself in words on paper. If I leave it all chasing round my head like rabbits in a warren, I'm apt to become a bug-bear to live with and my family would not thank me. Some people need counselors. Some people need long, drawn-out phone-calls with a trusted friend. Some people need to go out for a run. I need to get away to a quiet, lonesome corner--preferably on the front steps at gloaming with the North Star trembling against the darkening blue. I need to set my pen fiercely against the page {for at such moments I must be writing--not typing.} and I need to convert the stress or excitement or happiness into something to be shared with another person.
The beauty of the relationship between reading and writing is its give-and-take dynamic. For years I gathered and read every b ~ Rachel Heffington

I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play. ~ Tom Stoppard

This one went unusually smoothly. When I finished it, I remarked to a friend that I felt like an engineer who had designed a machine and then sat back and realized it did everything I'd set out to do.

Which made him say, quite emphatically, "No engineer has ever felt this. ~ Robert J. Bennett

Critics should be to actors what ornithologists are to birds: they can write all they want, but it shouldn't affect them. ~ John Simm

I always take an Alastair Sawday guide. I stayed in three or four places in India that they had recommended, and every one of them was wonderful. ~ Diana Quick

The obvious reductio ad absurdum is Holocaust deniers: Should their perspective be provided, for "balance," any time someone writes about the Holocaust? ~ Chris Mooney

Why is it important to look at fiction writing through the lens of emotional experience? Because that's the way readers read. They don't so much read as respond. They do not automatically adopt your outlook and outrage. They formulate their own. You are not the author of what readers feel, just the provocateur of those feelings. You may curate your characters' experiences and put them on display, but the exhibit's meaning is different in thousands of ways for thousands of different museum visitors, your readers. Not ~ Donald Maass

Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter. ~ Iain Banks

You want to know, companions of my youth,
How much has changed the wild but shy young poet
Forever writing last poem after last poem;
You hear he's dark as earth, barefoot,
A turban round his head, a bolo at his side,
His ballpen blown up to a long-barreled gun:
Deeper still the struggling change inside. ~ Emmanuel F. Lacaba

It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written. ~ Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

My school teacher of language and literature always admired with my writing, treating me as one of his most favorite students. He gave me the different vision of myself. Being the person of unique talents, charisma, great wisdom, and intelligence, the teacher was that "beam of sunshine in the blackness," so invaluable that it wouldn't be possible for me to survive without his inspiring, kind, and cheering, caring words. ~ Sahara Sanders

It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations. ~ Michael Haneke

In the end, whether I write the script or, in this case, somebody else did, there's a point where you let it go when you're making a movie. You just have to. The thing that you shoot is not what you imagined in your head - it never is exactly that. And it shouldn't be. ~ Todd Haynes

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership. ~ Joshua Ferris

The Bible is the light of my understanding, the joy of my heart, the fullness of my hope, the clarified of my affections, the mirror of my thoughts, the consoler of my sorrows, the guide of my soul through this gloomy labyrinth of time, the telescope went from heaven to reveal to the eye of man the amazing glories of the far distant world. ~ William Jones

My mother is changing history. She is making her balalaika-smashing mother into a heroine. Does she want me to do the same for her? Is that what good children do for their parents? What about good writers? ~ Gary Shteyngart

Writing is often a perilous journey. Low self-esteem or confusion about goals may be the Shadows that chill our work, an editor or one's own judgemental side may be the Threshold Guardians that block our way. Accidents, computer problems, and difficulties with time and discipline may torment us and taunt like Tricksters. Unrealistic dreams of success or distractions may be the Shapeshifters who tempt, confuse, and dazzle us. Deadlines, editorial decisions, or the struggle to sell our work may be the Tests and Ordeals from which we seem to die but are Resurrected to write again. ~ Christopher Vogler

But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all. ~ Alan Bennett

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us. ~ Terrence McNally

They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him? ~ Anton Bruckner

I started writing plays in around 1967, and at a certain point, I thought, 'I'm writing plays, I should learn about acting and what it is.' So I went to the HB Studio in New York, and I was there for about nine months. ~ Wallace Shawn