"I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 129 of 1537)
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"Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it."
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"People try to force things. It's disastrous. Just leave your mind alone. Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way."
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"An original something, dear maid, you would wish me to write; but how shall I begin? For I'm sure I have not original in me, Excepting Original Sin."
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"Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company. The safest approach is to remove all useful information."
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"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore."
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"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."
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"I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam."
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"I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me."
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"Probably the best way to describe my writing style is to refer you to "purple prose", which was a tag given to the early mass market magazine writers earning a half cent a word for their fiction. They had to use every adjective, verb and adverb in the English language to add word count to stories in order to feed and support families."
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"If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write"
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"Good writing is rewriting."
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"I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch."
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"Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."
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"It's a dismally lonely business, writing."
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"People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do."
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"The best advice I have is keep writing, keep practicing, keep winning, losing and understanding the difference. Never stop learning, never stop pushing yourself. Then find yourself a team you can work well with and help make awesome things happen."
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"It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse."
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"Thousands of volumes have been written about aviation, but we do not automatically have thousands of true and special friends in their authors. That rare writer who comes alive on a page does it by giving of himself, by writing of meanings, and not just of fact or of things that have happened to him. The writers of flight who have done this are usually found together in a special section on private bookshelves."
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"Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one."
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