Writing P Quotes

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words. ~ P.D. James

Men write great romance because they have more at stake ~ P.J. Bayliss

Sometimes I don't even know why I'm writing what I'm writing...
I'm just following these people around and taking notes. ~ P. Anastasia

How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'
If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius. ~ P.D. James

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns. ~ P.L. Travers

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

When a day goes by and I haven't written anything, I better have been doing something worth writing about. ~ P.S. Bartlett

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
[Ten rules for writing fiction, The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, and AL Kennedy)] ~ P.D. James

Grab for time to write instead of wait for time. ~ Julia Cameron

My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few words for her "Husbands and Brothers" page on "What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing". I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop, I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Good fiction doesn't claim to mirror reality at all. It indicts reality by providing a paradigm of shape and order and justice - the way we all know things should be - without suggesting that's how things really are. Good fiction is the mirage that declares itself a mirage, yet compels us to faith through its beauty. Good fiction is the dream that's too good to be true, so perfect and symmetrical that it gives itself away every time. But it doesn't trick you into suspending your disbelief by trying to look anything like reality. Good fiction makes you acutely, painfully aware of your disbelief, and makes you believe anyway. And when it's done well - when it's done right - good fiction is more real than reality. ~ P.S. Baber

I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity.
In both fiction and non-fiction, there's only one question and one answer. 'What happened?' the reader asks. 'This is what happened,' the writer responds. 'This ... and this ... and this, too.' Keep it simple. It's the only sure way home. ~ Stephen King

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"
(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.) ~ David Halberstam

And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway. ~ Anne Lamott

Twenty minutes into our walk away from the wall put us deep in a forest of fir, pine, cottonwood, and aspen trees. The lush forest floor was alive and danced with shadows cast from an endless parade of swaying trees. As we approached early evening it was cool and peaceful. The sound of the trees moving in the wind high above seemed like a friendly traveling companion, calling us farther and farther into the depths of the forest. ~ Patrick Carman

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry. ~ Marianne Moore

It's great being a part time writer. If you sell books you're a success. But if you don't sell any then all you have to say is " writing is just an amusing hobby". ~ Aaron T. Knight

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together. ~ Tom Glazer

To boost bonding among others so they are more apt to work (or play) well together, ask them, when together, to do two powerfully simple things that can be done rather quickly:
1. Write down the ways they are like each other. Hint: Create a level playing field. Writing rather than immediately sharing helps slow thinkers keep up with fast thinkers. Fast thinkers aren't smarter, just different in their thinking processes, and each kind has advantages and pitfalls, so they can accomplish more together than when a majority in a group think and speak at the same speed. Hint: Salespeople are often fast thinkers.
2. Share with each other what they wrote, going around the circle, one by one.
Bonus benefit: Other studies show that when you reflect on how you are similar to those with whom you are talking, you pay more attention to them. You care about them more. That spurs the other person to listen more closely to you. ~ Kare Anderson

Ren took his time perusing the menu and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. I didn't even pick my menu up. He shot me meaningful glances while I sat silently, trying to avoid making eye contact. When she came back, she spoke to him briefly and gestured to me.
I smiled, and in a syrupy sweet voice, said, "I'll have whatever will get me out of here the fastest. Like a salad, maybe."
Ren smiled benignly back at me and rattled off what sounded like a banquet of choices, which the waitress was more than happy to take her time writing down. She kept touching him and laughing with him too. Which I found very, very annoying.
When she left, he leaned back in his chair and sipped his water.
I broke the silence first and hissed at him quietly, "I don't know what you're playing at, but you only have about two minutes left, so I hope you ordered the steak tartar, Tiger."
He grinned mischievously. "We'll see, Kells. We'll see."
"Fine. No skin off my nose. I can't wait to see what happens when a white tiger runs through this nice establishment creating mayhem and havoc. Perhaps they will lose one of their stars because they put their patrons in danger. Maybe your new waitress girlfriend will run away screaming." I smiled at the thought.
Ren affected shock, "Why, Kelsey! Are you jealous?"
I snorted in a very unladylike way. "No! Of course not."
He grinned. Nervously, I played with my cloth napkin. "I can't believe you convinced Mr. Kadam to ~ Colleen Houck

'Sanctus' was done on speculation. I had no agent or publisher. I was being sensible, I suppose, by writing a standalone novel. I figured if that one didn't work, no one would be interested in reading a sequel. ~ Simon Toyne

For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels. ~ Ethel Waters

Experiment with grounding yourself with who you are, not what you do. ~ Gina Greenlee

I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975. ~ Eric Bogosian

Every journalist has a novel inside him, which is an excellent place for it. ~ Russell Lynes

I like to synthesize; I hate analysis. I don't like to take a subject and break it down into parts; I like to take disparate parts and put them all together and see what happens. I believe the old saw that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Of course, it may also be less. But it's the parts that interest me; it's not the whole. ~ Gilbert Sorrentino

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images. ~ Bill Viola

Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism. ~ Alice Munro

I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all. ~ Nicholas Sparks

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy ... and I keep it in a jar on my desk. ~ Stephen King

The word story is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work. ~ Bruce Chatwin

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end. ~ Robert Morgan

Scientific fraud, plagiarism, and ghost writing are increasingly being reported in the news media, creating the impression that misconduct has become a widespread and omnipresent evil in scientific research. ~ Heinrich Rohrer

Keep on reading, thinking, doing and writing!
Words keep introducing their friends to you. ~ Toba Beta

I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession. ~ John Updike

Read and write. That's the recipe for being a writer. ~ J.D. Cunegan

To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily. ~ David Bowie

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since. ~ Sharon Creech

I'm much more into old-world, intimate conversations on the phone. I like to write letters. ~ Kimora Lee Simmons