"We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 39 of 1537)
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"My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything."
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"I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye, excepting yours alone, ... so that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were being invented at every step, and as if it were burning immediately"
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"I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one."
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"['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought."
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"Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness."
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"I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am."
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"There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem."
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"The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it."
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"I don't read a lot of the sports, because I think people sometimes either build it up, or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it, so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head."
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"I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me."
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"I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary."
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"I'm a person who is always trying to write in a different vein."
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"It does not matter whether one paints a picture, writes a poem, or carves a statue - simplicity is the mark of a master-hand."
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"There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention."
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"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This weed we call self-actualization….It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming."
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"Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it's done."
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"This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others."
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"I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go and paring the excess away. This is against all the best advice for writing long form prose, and I have tried over the years to break myself of the habit, but I can't bear to leave anything ungainly on the page and half the fun for me is that tinkering. So the length of a novel was a daunting prospect."
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"I really enjoy writing novels. Its like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off."
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