Writing quotes

Writing

30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

30.7K quotes

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Writing quotes (page 88 of 1537)

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George R. R. Martin Novelist, Screenwriter
Writing

"I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring."

Writing Book Hate
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George R. R. Martin Novelist, Screenwriter
Writing

"I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters."

Writing Strong Hate
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Gore Vidal Writer, Essayist, Playwright
Writing

"You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have."

Writing Cities Perfect
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Gunter Grass Novelist
Writing

"The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous."

Thinking Writing Mind
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Franz Kafka Writer
Writing

"What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness."

Thinking Writing Communication
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Franz Kafka Writer
Writing

"Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment."

Writing Want Diaries
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James M. Cain Novelist
Writing

"A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter."

Writing College Typewriters
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Frederic Chopin Composer
Writing

"You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat"

Writing Dry Hungry
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Lesley Gore Singer-songwriter
Writing

"I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster, and I start that way, the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it."

Writing Song Morning
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Writing

"Many writers struggle with exposition in their novels. Often they heap it on in large chunks of straight narrative. Back story – what happens before the novel opens – is especially troublesome. How can we give the essentials and avoid a mere information drop? Use dialogue. First, create a tension-filled scene, usually between two characters. Get them arguing, confronting each other. Then you can have the information appear in the natural course of things."

Writing Character Struggle
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Mark Russell Political Satirist
Writing

"I think you can't write with anger. I think it always has to be with a wink. There always has to be an element of hope in what you write. Otherwise you're just getting mad and it's not going to be fun for anybody."

Thinking Writing Fun
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Writing

"The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem."

Writing
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Lil Wayne Rapper, Musician
Writing

"Thank God, I'm actually infatuated and in love with what I do, therefore I am what I do. So I never have to forget [any of my ideas] because I never have to remember, I just am. I don't need to write stuff down."

Writing Ideas Thank God
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