Al Purdy Quotes

I started writing when I was about thirteen.

Al Purdy

• Writing

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

  

  Ed Westwick
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Poetry

• Cancer has taught me a lot of things. Maybe it is the best thing that has happened to me. I can't say right now, but maybe some years down the line, I would realise. When I was taking chemotherapy, there were a lot of elderly patients, and that would inspire me. I thought, 'If they can be cured, why can't I be?'

  

  Yuvraj Singh
  • Why
  • Best
  • Thought

• Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

  

  Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Writing
  • Heart
  • Done

• Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Book

• Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.

  

  Patrick White
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Man

• Hard writing makes easy reading.

  

  Wallace Stegner
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Easy

• I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Think

• I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.

  

  Ian Mcewan
  • Up
  • Time
  • Writing

• When I'm writing, I spend all my time in The Grocer on Elgin buying ready-made meals; I think they are the only reason my husband and kids haven't left me.

  

  Sadie Jones
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Kids

• We all need to focus on our writing. Because the millions of readers out there don't care about your blog.

  

  J. A. Konrath
  • Writing
  • Focus
  • Care

• I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.

  

  Dan Hill
  • Writing
  • Guy
  • Day

• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Feeling

• I'm so damn boring. I like reading and writing and making coffee. And walking. Barry Jenkins likes long walks.

  

  Barry Jenkins
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Reading

• When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.

  

  M. J. Rose
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Dream

• I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white, and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent, and I'm not your mommy; I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • People
  • Time
  • Writing

• I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • Writing
  • Like
  • More

• There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Writing
  • Think
  • Song

• Tell your idea to whomever will listen, and you'll get valuable market feedback before writing a single line of code.

  

  Aaron Patzer
  • Writing
  • Single
  • Feedback

• Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing.

  

  Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Writing
  • Family
  • Me

• The first accepted piece of writing is the most exciting. No other publishing experience matches it. Perhaps jaundice sets in, or expectations are raised, or one starts to think that one is better than is the truth.

  

  David Bergen
  • Writing
  • Experience
  • Truth

• Outside of my parents, it's my older sister, Ngum. She lives with me in Detroit and helps me with my day-to-day stuff. She's somebody I've always looked up to. When she was leaving high school and going to college, I wanted to follow in her footsteps.

  

  Ndamukong Suh
  • Up
  • School
  • She

• I started writing nonfiction because nonfiction is well-suited to subjects that, if you wrote them as fiction, people would say, "I don't believe this. This is a little outlandish".

  

  Debra Monroe
  • Writing
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction

• I started writing when I was about thirteen.

  

  Al Purdy
  • Writing