"Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 169 of 1537)
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"At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?"
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"I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in."
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"And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey."
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"It takes great self-confidence to write a newspaper column. Some might say it takes arrogance. Be that as it may, my willingness to pronounce on a great many matters of which I have little or no knowledge is one of my prime qualifications for this trade."
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"Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing."
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"The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer."
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"When I write about "realizations," I am describing a state in which a practitioner has wisdom of who she or he is, and has embodied that wisdom; it has become integrated into daily life, thoughts, and activities. We often view "awakening" as first step towards such realization. Awakening can occur in the blink of an eye, frequently through the direct, heart-opening (heart-breaking) transmission of grace from an awakened teacher."
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"One day you will take me completely out of myself, I'll do what the angels cannot do. Your eyelash will write on my cheek the poem that hasn't been thought of."
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"A lot of the songs I write are like songs that I've never been able to find on any record, but that I've always wanted to hear. Or maybe in a style I already loved, but I was looking for something in it that I wasn't hearing yet."
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"Professors will lecture with more inspiration if they occasionally alternate the classroom with the beach: authors will write better when, as Macaulay used to do, they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing. But certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved."
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"Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it."
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"Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure."
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"The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat."
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"If I knew how to say it directly, I would not need to write poetry. I would just talk to people and be happy."
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"When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear."
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"Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage."
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"Most of us don't have to worry about being shot of we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility."
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"Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about."
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"No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest."
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