"Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 98 of 1537)
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"In making Achilles and Patroclus lovers, I wasn't trying to speak for all gay men, just as when I write straight characters, I don't claim to speak for all straight people. My job as an author is to give voice to these very particular characters - these two men, in this time, and in this place"
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"My goal from the very beginning was just to write good songs that don't require any production to be felt or understood. I wanted to be able to sit in a room with a guitar and play the song from beginning to end and have it be as impactful as if you heard the studio version with all the bells and whistles."
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"I regret trusting The Guardian. I didn't want to do an interview, but the journalist was persistent. [The writer] was masked as a fan, but was hiding sinister ambitions and angles. Maybe he's actually the boring one looking for something interesting to write about."
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"I like to write about the way things used to be and paint pictures of my memories with beautiful words and melodies."
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"I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I'm not that comfortable."
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"I get very invested in characters, it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work."
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"Your writing is still yours, no matter what the contract or your editor might say. Trust your gut. It knows when you're screwing up. Your brain will lie to you. It loves the paycheck, it loves positive feedback. Your gut is under no obligation to make you feel good."
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"A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is."
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". . . you [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema. . . . Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers."
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"Insights into erotic life belong to art, not education. But sometimes these have to be spelled out for the illiterates. And it ismainly a matter of convincing the illiterates, for they are the ones who write the penal code."
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"Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy."
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"We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life."
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"The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates."
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"I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living."
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"He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize"
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"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone."
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"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash."
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"Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it."
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"If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass."
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