Writing Help Quotes

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. ~ Anne Lamott

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

Writing help us to express our thoughts, to share experiences, to think, to love, to inspire, to motivate, to challenge, to liberate, to learn, to hope, to smile and to wonder. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You know, I was a kid when I went into 'Coronation Street' and I had an amazing time. I got some fantastic opportunities from Corrie and from 'Soapstar' and I'd never say they did anything other than help me. ~ Richard Fleeshman

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time. ~ Howard Nemerov

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels. ~ Lou Reed

Unable to help herself, she cupped ~ Jill Shalvis

Dog' is 'God' spelled backward; you know that. That's why you're here, to help the nuns do God's work. ~ W. Bruce Cameron

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality? ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

Taxpayers have put more than $24 trillion on the line to resuscitate Wall Street after the economic meltdown of last year. With the help of this massive taxpayer support, the nation's largest banks are posting record profits. ~ Maria Cantwell

My especial object is to help the poor; the rich can help themselves. I believe in self-made men. ~ Joseph Pulitzer

You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it's better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones. ~ Diana Gabaldon

[In my pre-success years] there was a constant hunger, measuring myself against other actors, and there was sometimes fear. But, there was always a need for self-improvement, to help with the struggle to make myself a better actor. ~ John Goodman

I've always wanted to help build a better society and build a better company, and I always wanted a healthy, vibrant company, a healthy, vibrant society. We take care of our people, we provide them with opportunity. But I've always believed business is here to serve your clients, your shareholders, your communities. If we do this well, everyone benefits. We have to do a good job for all of them. ~ Jamie Dimon

Accounts of eating Christmas sweet potatoes baked in ashes and jackrabbit stewed with white flour dumplings are testaments to pioneer resilience and pleasure - and they help inspire my own best scratch cooking. ~ Isabel Gillies

I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in. ~ Porochista Khakpour

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist. ~ Paul Valery

I got the groceries and lugged them all the way to Akinli's dorm, running slightly behind because I couldn't get into the building on my own. The university required ID cards to get into the dorms after six, and since I wasn't an actual student, I had to wait for someone else to come along and scan his so I could piggyback in.
"You need some help?" the boy asked, his eyes lingering on my mouth.
I shook my head no.
"Aww, come on. That's way too heavy for you."
He came closer, and again I cursed our natural appeal. I wasn't in danger exactly, and I knew that, but it didn't make these encounters any less uncomfortable. I shook my head again.
"No, really, which floor are you on? I can - "
"Hey, Kahlen!" I looked up to see Akinli walking down the hall. His button-up was open over the gray shirt beneath it, but I was thrilled to see that he'd at least put one on. "I was starting to worry. Hey, Sam."
"Hey." The boy gave Akinli a look and headed toward the stairwell, his displeasure at Akinli's arrival clear. In the meantime, I felt my mood lift significantly. I was now officially on my first date. ~ Kiera Cass

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints. ~ Jim Harrison

I'm amazed sometimes by the Christians who don't really believe that God wants to help them and bless them. ~ Joyce Meyer

How did Ixtel become real for me? The world is full of Ixtels who I can help without hurting my father. Why this one? How was it her suffering that touched me? Father. I feel connected to her through my father's actions. I feel an obligation to right my father's wrong. But why? Shouldn't my father's welfare come first? His welfare is my welfare. How does one weigh love for a parent against the urge to help someone in need? I feel like what is right should be done no matter what. This lack of doubt makes me feel inhuman. But it is not a question of my head for once. I hear the right note. I recognize the wrong note. Maybe the right action is a lake like this one, green and quiet and deep. ~ Francisco X Stork

The only way to reach the mountain peaks of life is to forget about self and help other people reach greater heights. ~ Zig Ziglar

In the future, when we get serious about executing things correctly, this thing will be very easy to do. If we find out that this technique does not work, I don't intend to step on dead bodies to achieve something because I don't have that kind of ambition. My ambition is to help people. ~ Panayiotis Zavos

So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is "content" and the latter is "style." ~ Isaac Asimov

Writing is always harder than talking. ~ Gloria Steinem

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want. ~ Bonnie McKee

Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago. ~ John Wesley

If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea. ~ Stephen King

You can't get stuck on what should have happened. That doesn't help you. ~ Mitch Albom

Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead. ~ Amanda Hocking

Writing of a chance early meeting with Dylan Thomas in a London bar, Kay Boyle writes (1955, in the era of McCarthyism, 1947-1956):

Perhaps because he [Dylan Thomas was so often out of place among men, we take him now as symbol. Perhaps because we who write in America are in great difficulties now, we cherish Dylan Thomas as if he were our own ego, our own wild soul freed of the flesh. An American critic, writing of the American literary scene, points out that thinking Americans, in this period of our nation's development, are deeply troubled because "the demands for national security and for individual freedom" are in conflict. ~ Kay Boyle

I got the fat poet into a corner and told him he was writing shit and couldn't get away with it

Now it is night and time
for sleep. Everyone is
tired

from garbage-glutting
lifting their snouts
from the trough
long enough
to ease their gut -
I won't urge the point.

Gold-plated poems
to stuff up
their mind's ass

or politics
watered down so as
not to scare the blue bloods
Boo! you well-fed bastards ~ Kenneth Patchen

Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive for the writer. ~ Rachel Kushner

More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way. ~ Lev Grossman

In the end, I believe these pages and the Book of Records return to the persistence of this desire: to know the times in which we are alive. To keep the record that must be kept and also, finally, to let it go. ~ Madeleine Thien

The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can't yet be perfectly orthodox, it can, with the Holy Spirit's help and by the grace of God, be perpetually reformable. ~ Brian D. McLaren

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. ~ Cecil Day-Lewis

If you wish to please me, and to bring success and honour to yourself, do right and study, because others will help you if you help yourself. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Some poets write pages upon pages because their hearts have a song to sing and their melodies cannot be contained in a single stanza... and I find myself typing out a quote because my soul is still gasping for breath, and all the words form a single sentence: I miss us. ~ Alfa H

A blank page is no empty space. It is brimming with potential ... It is a masterpiece in waiting
yours. ~ A.A. Patawaran

If you're a writer, the insight of other writers - if there's some kind of Holy Grail message on how to deal with writer's block or how to deal with any problem that can come up - whether you're writing about yourself or a group of people, I find that very interesting. ~ Jim Rash