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

• I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write.

  

  Jodi Picoult
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Kids

• My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

  

  Ryszard Kapuscinski
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Travel

• It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

  

  Muhammad Ali
  • Killer
  • Gorilla
  • Chiller

• A gentleman can hardly continue to sit,' he explained, in his serenest and most level voice, 'when he asks a very remarkable young lady to do him the honor of marrying him. And - 'he somehow contrived to grin at me wickedly, 'I usually get what I want, Miss Grahame,' he added, and pitched over in a tangled heap on the floor.

  

  Elizabeth Marie Pope
  • Voice
  • Gentleman
  • Lady

• 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