"Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 84 of 1537)
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"The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight."
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"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."
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"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."
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"It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything."
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"What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice."
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"Man has always been half-monster, half-dreamer."
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"The trouble with a lot of people who try to write is they intellectualize about it. That comes after. The intellect is given to us by God to test things once they’re done, not to worry about things ahead of time."
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"I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye."
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"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed."
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"Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons."
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"The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book."
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"I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'"
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"Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom-box."
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"The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way."
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"I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer."
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"In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity."
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"I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it."
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"I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ."
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"Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think."
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