"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 60 of 1537)
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"Wilson was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, 'That depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes, 3 days. If half hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.'"
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"Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing."
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"It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write."
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"Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the field you are writing about, but writing is what you are doing."
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"When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
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"Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works."
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"One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power."
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"It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born."
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"The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it."
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"Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction."
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"When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction."
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"I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody."
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"If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?"
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"Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself."
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"The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing."
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"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."
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"Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing."
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"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."
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"Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place."
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