"I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 128 of 1537)
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"In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."
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"It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear."
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"Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us."
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"Writing is a divine art, and the more I write and read the more I love it."
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"The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea."
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"For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."
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"Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections."
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"I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity."
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"We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print."
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"You have a touch in letter writing that is beyond me. Something unexpected, like coming round a corner in a rose garden and finding it still daylight."
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"If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit."
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"I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy."
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"The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love."
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"Just write every day of your life. Read intensely."
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"Screenplays are not writing. They're a fake form of writing. It's a lot of dialogue and very little atmosphere. Very little description. Very little character work. It's very dangerous. You'll never learn to write."
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"Don't talk about it; write."
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"Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones."
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"To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next."
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"Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all."
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