"When I finished [writing it], I was crying. I knew at long last, after ten years of trying, I had written something good."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 221 of 1537)
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"Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation."
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"I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me."
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"I've been writing every day of my life for 65 years."
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"Men are nuts. Young men are crazy. We all love toys. I'm toy oriented. I write about toys. I've got a lot of toys. Hundreds of things. But computers are toys, and men like to mess around with smart dumb things. They feel creative."
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"I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer."
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"It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really."
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"Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries."
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"I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent."
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"A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study."
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"He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem."
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"Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens."
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"My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes."
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"I think we all live dichotomies. I'm a father of three boys and a loyal homebody sort of husband and father. And yet I act in movies and write and direct movies."
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"I do my best writing between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.. Almost every friend I have who is a consistently productive writer, does their best writing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. My quota is two crappy pages per day. I keep it really low so I'm not so intimidated that I never get started. I will do the gathering of interviews and research throughout the day. I'll get all my notes and materials together and then I'll do the synthesis between 10 p.m. to bed, which is usually 4 or 5 a.m."
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"I just simply write as it moves me. I may be writing about a book or a movie or a person, places where I've been or something I've done. Or politics. It's going to what's on my mind at the moment"
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"Nothing is better for a young journalist than to go and write about something that other people don't know about. If you can afford to send yourself to some foreign part, I still think that's by far the best way to break in"
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"Most really good fiction is compelled into being. It comes from a kind of uncalculated innocence. You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what's going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure."
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"Get yourself in that extreme state of being next to madness. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman."
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"Whenever I write, I only write about what I know or what I have experienced or feeling."
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