"Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 168 of 1537)
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"Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior."
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"What is writing? Writing is telepathy."
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"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
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"I write in the mornings, in the bright daylight. But I get most of my good ideas after the sun has gone down and the dark is on the land."
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"The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons."
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"When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off."
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"If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."
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"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly."
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"If you can remember all the accessories that go with your best outfit, the contents of your purse, the starting lineup of the New York Yankees or the Houston Oilers, or what label "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys was on, you are capable of remembering the differences between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective)."
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"One does not consider style, because style is."
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"Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself."
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"The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods."
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"In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die."
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"The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready."
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"I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air."
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"I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography."
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"Many of us write because we are readers and have grown up in a long tradition, and we want to be able to add to that extraordinary flow of interpretations of the world."
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"I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature."
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"I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things."
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