O. Henry Quotes

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

O. Henry

• Writing
• Giving
• Secret

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Quotes to Explore

• Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.

  

  Tayari Jones
  • Literature
  • Secret
  • Western

• All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Writing
  • Storytelling

• I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it's a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Game
  • Giving
  • Best

• I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

  

  Rachel Johnson
  • Writing
  • Done
  • Thing

• Many past products advertised in old publications can be profitably promoted all over again. Sometimes, just by giving them a new twist or modern application, you'll hit a real winner.

  

  E. Joseph Cossman
  • Real
  • Past
  • Giving

• I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • Writing
  • Friends
  • Marketing

• There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

  

  Beck
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Song

• I can be collaborative, for instance, in situations where I go and study the artist's work before I start writing. Then I can at least try to write towards their style.

  

  Warren Ellis
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Style

• Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Giving
  • Wife
  • Marriage

• Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.

  

  Pamela Sargent
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Science

• Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Expressing

• After a decade in public life working to stop Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, I cannot support a deal giving Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief - in return for letting it maintain an advanced nuclear program and the infrastructure of a threshold nuclear state.

  

  Ted Deutch
  • Life
  • Giving
  • Support

• I don't like giving up hits and stuff, but I try not to show it. I don't want the hitter to see that something bothers me.

  

  Jacob deGrom
  • Up
  • Want
  • Giving

• I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.

  

  Kary Mullis
  • Writing
  • Black
  • Grandfather

• I wish the press were paying more attention to the erosion of the Constitution and the slippery slope that we're getting into, by giving up the right of the Congress to talk about when and how and where we go to war.

  

  Barbara Lee
  • Up
  • War
  • Giving

• When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.

  

  Patrick Ness
  • Writing
  • Trying
  • Best

• If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.

  

  Manika
  • Writing
  • Want
  • Songwriting

• Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.

  

  Pamela Dean
  • Writing
  • Day
  • Thoughts

• You can fake a lot of stuff, but you can't fake if the story isn't there and if the writing isn't good.

  

  Carol Kane
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Fake

• It is proclaimed by the great leaders of that party, by its political conventions, by its ministers of the Gospel, and by every other means they have of giving currency and importance to the declaration, that it is its mission to abolish slavery in the Union.

  

  John H. Reagan
  • Great
  • Political
  • Giving

• I know that one of the things that I really did to push myself was to write more formal poems, so I could feel like I was more of a master of language than I had been before. That was challenging and gratifying in so many ways. Then with these new poems, I've gone back to free verse, because it would be easy to paint myself into a corner with form. I saw myself becoming more opaque with the formal poems than I wanted to be. It took me a long time to work back into free verse again. That was a challenge in itself. You're always having to push yourself.

  

  Barbara Hambly
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Challenges

• That's one of the perks of my job, is getting to see what the Internet does.

  

  Marc Guggenheim
  • Job

• I start writing songs first as an entertainer, and I like funny stories that wrap up with dignity.

  

  Jens Lekman
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Funny

• I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

  

  O. Henry
  • Writing
  • Giving
  • Secret