Writing

James Lee Burke Author

Writing

"You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?"

Writing Two Choices

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James M. Cain Novelist

Writing

"You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel."

Writing Mind Waiting

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Henry Ford Industrialist

Writing

"Writing is the only profession where nobody considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Money is like an arm or a leg; use it or lose it."

Writing Legs Use It Or Lose It

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Henry James Author

Writing

"I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme."

Writing Love Literature

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Henry James Author

Writing

"If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'"

People Writing Trying

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Henry Louis Gates Scholar, Historian

Writing

"The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race."

Writing Self Race

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist

Writing

"Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing."

Thinking Writing Book

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist

Writing

"And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest."

Writing Book Sitting

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist

Writing

"Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible."

Writing Dream Pain

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Kevin James Actor/Comedian

Writing

"Sometimes I make my life a living hell by writing complex stories with complex characters. But I love it."

Writing Character Stories

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James Scott Artist

Writing

"A hero knows it takes hard work and a long time to get published; a fool thinks it should happen immediately, because he thinks heÕs a hero already."

Writing Hero Hard Work

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James Thurber Cartoonist, Author

Writing

"I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that."

Writing Long Drawing

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James Thurber Cartoonist, Author

Writing

"At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy, or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher."

Writing Flower Leaving

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Henry Sydnor Harrison Author

Writing

"What the young writer is looking for is not a critic who will slap him on the back and say, 'Greatest thing since O. Henry,' but rather the one who will toss the manuscript down in disgust, with 'You know better than that! It's rotten! Do it all over again!'"

Writing Rotten Toss

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Friedrich Nietzsche Philosopher, Writer

Writing

"Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest."

Writing Harvest Tablets

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Friedrich Nietzsche Philosopher, Writer

Writing

"Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers."

Writing Two Knowing

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Friedrich Nietzsche Philosopher, Writer

Writing

"A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays."

Writing Book Long

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Khaled Hosseini Author, Physician

Writing

"The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again."

Thinking Writing Romance

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Mark Twain Writer, Humorist

Writing

"If I'd seen a playwright ever write an' play at the same time, I'd have given 'em more of a chance at cards. Can I get an 'amen?'"

Writing Play Cards

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Mark Twain Writer, Humorist

Writing

"Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell."

Writing Book Letting Go

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