Writing

Ray Bradbury Author

Writing

"You fail only if you stop writing."

Writing Failing Inspiration To Write

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Ray Bradbury Author

Writing

"You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught."

Writing School Teacher

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Ray Bradbury Author

Writing

"The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so."

Writing Lasts Forever

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Saul Bellow Novelist

Writing

"I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous."

Writing Long Ordinary

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Saul Bellow Novelist

Writing

"All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac."

Writing Marriage Aphrodisiac

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Saul Bellow Novelist

Writing

"There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book."

Writing Book Sunset

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Thomas Keller Chef, Restaurateur

Writing

"One of the problems with writing a cookbook is that recipes exist in the moment."

Writing Food Cooking

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Thomas Merton Writer, Monk

Writing

"If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn."

Writing Freedom Helping Others

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Tim Ferriss Author, Entrepreneur, Podcaster

Writing

"Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple."

Writing Simple Sweet

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Toni Morrison Novelist, Essayist

Writing

"Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe."

Writing Safe Pages

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Tracy K. Smith Poet, Professor

Writing

"Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon – even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky."

Thinking Writing Real

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Shelley Berman Comedian, Actor

Writing

"We teach reading, writing and math by [having students do] them. But we teach democracy by lecture."

Writing Reading Math

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Rick James Musician

Writing

"I get some letters from girls that if their mothers knew what they were writing me in these letters, they'd get their butts whipped."

Writing Mother Girl

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Sigmund Freud Neurologist, Psychoanalyst

Writing

"Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home."

Writing Home Peace

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Simone de Beauvoir Philosopher, Writer

Writing

"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels."

Writing Powerful Bad Ass

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Socrates Philosopher

Writing

"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul."

Writing Soul Evil

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Socrates Philosopher

Writing

"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean."

Writing Mean Inspiration

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Robert Frost Poet

Writing

"You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing."

Believe Writing Art

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Stephen King Author

Writing

"When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'"

Writing Answers One Word

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Stephen King Author

Writing

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it."

Writing Stories Doors

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