Writing Tools Quotes

What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work. ~ Walt Whitman

Thought for the day: Twitter ... 140 character limit ... must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers ... ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

Punctuation is a fabulous tool for controlling your reader - you even get to control where they breathe. That's what I call power! ~ Nicola Morgan

Scientists require apparatus, but mathists splendidly require only writing tools and erasers. Better, philosophers do not even need erasers ~ Gregory Benford

The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage. ~ Anne McCaffrey

I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that. ~ Zephyr Teachout

Restaurant critics all struggle with the difficulty of writing about eating without resorting to the word 'delicious' and its synonyms. ~ Bee Wilson

If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so ~ Richard Dawkins

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas. ~ Michael Caine

I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo. ~ Rachel Sklar

If you're into writing and making people laugh, or just want to video blog something, you should get a simple digital video camera. And all computers now come with an easy video editing software program. Just mess around with that for a little bit, try to figure it out, then just put stuff online and have fun. Never give up! ~ Lucas Cruikshank

I mean, when I was young I could write all through the night and I loved to work late into the night. Now that I'm older I work really well in the early morning when your synapses are firing a little better. But I work at different times of the day. ~ Edward Hirsch

There's nothing an artist needs more - even more than excellent tools and stamina - than a deadline. ~ Adriana Trigiani

The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach? [...] Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away. ~ Thomas Frank

The 1970s and 1980s: feminism, androgyny, modernism, aesthetics

In the 1970s and 1980s, Woolf studies expanded in a number of directions,
most notably in relation to feminism. Critical interest in Woolf developed at the same time as feminism developed in related academic disciplines. In this period her writings became central to the theoretical framing of feminism, in
particular to debates on Marxist and materialist feminism and to the emergent theories of androgyny. Both these areas of debate takeWoolf 's A Room of One's Own as a major point of reference...
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At the same time as feminist approaches to Woolf were developing and expanding, so, too, was the critical interest in her modernist theories and her formal aesthetics. Again, Woolf 's writing became central to critical and theoretical formulations on modernism.

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This period also saw considerable critical interest in the influence of the visual arts on Woolf 's writing, and particularly in the influence of the formalist theories of her Bloomsbury colleagues Roger Fry and Clive Bell. ~ Jane Goldman

Writing is the place where I can be as bold and compassionate and wise as I choose. ~ Richard Bowes

My places were emotional, primarily. I wrote of locales in which I had lived, or in which I imagined I could live, but the topography was primal and sexual and terminal. It bore no distinct architecture or design or dialect. It was merely human and in peril, which is to say universal. But on Royal and Coliseum and Vista--streets I cannot relinquish--I found my places and I dreamed a narrative. Can I go there and find it again?"--Tennessee Williams ~ James Grissom

Microsoft has had its success by doing low-cost products and constantly improving those products and we've really redefined the IT industry to be something that's about a tool for individuals. ~ Bill Gates

Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers. ~ Piers Anthony

It's such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can't imagine writing one if I'm not interested in the subject. ~ Michael Lewis

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'. ~ Eminem

The only private language I know is self-exaggeration. I think I've grown a second self in this room. It's the self-important fool that keeps the writer going. I exaggerate the pain of writing, the pain of solitude, the failure, the rage, the confusion, the helplessness, the fear, the humiliation. The narrower the boundaries of my life, the more I exaggerate myself. If the pain is real, why do I inflate it? Maybe this is the only pleasure I'm allowed. ~ Don DeLillo

I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers. ~ Jackie Collins

In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have - the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us. ~ Jonathan Stalling

'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Primatologists Richard Wrandham and Dale Peterson summarize... writing, 'Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression. ~ Cacilda Jetha

Like so many things in software, MVC was invented by Smalltalkers in the seventies. Lispers probably claim they came up with it in the sixties but didn't bother writing it down. ~ Robert Nystrom

She laughed. I closed my eyes. It sounded damn mournful, that laugh of hers echoing off the square. ~ Esi Edugyan

What I love most about being a writer is the opportunity to "play Goddess" by creating happy endings for people I care about (my characters) and being able to work in my robe! ~ Laura Abbot

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it. ~ Stephen King

Do you know much about Aaron Burr? There's a man, now, who is only damned and damned again in history and yet who had his parts. I have always designed writing something about him to show I did not stand in the jam of his vilifiers. I had a piece on him which should have gone into this book. You don't know (I guess I never told you) that when I was a lad, working in a lawyer's office, it fell to me to go over the river now and then with messages for Burr. Burr was very gentle--persuasive. He had a way of giving me a bit of fruit on these visits--an apple or a pear. I can see him clearly, still--his stateliness, gray hair, courtesy, consideration. ~ Walt Whitman

I don't use any fance quill pens or pads, because I can't read my own handwriting. I just use whatever computer is laying around, and start writing. ~ Mitch Albom

After the day's active life, we spend at least a few hours quietly to develop our aesthetic, theoretical, and spiritual understanding of the way of life. By either reading, writing, performing, or thinking and meditating, we should continuously refine our personality and deepen our understanding of art, literature, science, philosophy, religion, and various other arts. ~ Michio Kushi

Good ideas ought not to be dressed up in bad prose. ~ Barbara Minto

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race. ~ William Zinsser

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying. ~ Jennifer Jason Leigh

I sniffed as a few tears escaped, lifting my hands to wipe them away. It was then that I caught the only clues I'd been given by whoever had left me here.
On one wrist someone had written You are Kahlen. The other said He is Akinli.
I flipped my hands over and searched up and down my arms, hoping there was more.
"Look," I begged, holding out my arms.
"Pretty handwriting," Ben commented.
Julie hit him, but in a way that seemed playful. "Seriously?"
"That's all you have?" Akinli asked.
"Apparently. So, all I know is who I am and who you are." I looked into his eyes, the glowing blue, and sensed that was all that mattered. ~ Kiera Cass

My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing. ~ Gene Hackman

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses. ~ Adam Mansbach

In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women's movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy--that you belong. ~ Nikki Giovanni

Starting early and getting girls on computers, tinkering and playing with technology, games and new tools, is extremely important for bridging the gender divide that exists now in computer science and in technology. ~ Beth Simone Noveck

I quickly realized that I enjoyed editing more than writing. I felt more suited to it and it fit my nurturing personality. I had lots of ideas and a strong sense of structure, and I enjoyed working with talented writers, relishing the give-and-take in making their work better. ~ Lynn Povich

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good. ~ Chris Bauer

Writing didn't carry the same risks as speaking. You couldn't be shouted down or stared at. The page was both a proxy and a shield. ~ Samantha Shannon

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself.
(Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958) ~ Bernard Malamud