Arthur Quiller-Couch Quotes

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it-whole-heartedly-and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. sic

Arthur Quiller-Couch

• Writing

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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

• Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.

  

  Caleb Landry Jones
  • Life
  • Good
  • Great

• 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

• Writing a tribe is fun. They have their own language, their own slang; they repeat it, and it becomes part of the texture of the play. For a writer, that's thrilling. That's when my pen flies.

  

  Laura Wade
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Language

• It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• I didn't live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don't know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

  

  Lana Del Rey
  • Life
  • Time
  • Different

• I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

  

  Candace Bushnell
  • Writing
  • Nature
  • Start

• Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Yourself

• I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

  

  J. A. Jance
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• 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 love being a mom. But there's a certain kind of tedium to your life when your kid is young. Writing allows you to wander when your kid is napping in a crib ten feet away. So that's the great joy of writing fiction for me.

  

  Gayle Forman
  • Life
  • Kind
  • Mom

• A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Writing
  • Kids
  • Mother

• I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.

  

  Verite
  • People
  • Music
  • Writing

• I don't want to name any names, but I've worked on television shows where there's a guy writing for my generation who's, like, 60 - and it doesn't work.

  

  Zachary Knighton
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Guy

• I don't believe in 'thinking' old. Although I've transitioned through many bodies - a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult - my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

  

  Wayne Dyer
  • Life
  • Believe
  • Thinking

• I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.

  

  Mads Mikkelsen
  • People
  • Work
  • Writing

• You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.

  

  Benjamin Hammond "Ben" Haggerty
  • People
  • Different
  • Writing

• I love the whole process for each new album. The writing, the touring, everything. For me, it never gets old.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Writing
  • Never
  • Process

• The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • People
  • America
  • Look

• It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.

  

  Neil Tennant Pet Shop Boys
  • People
  • Up
  • Live

• A profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for establishment clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under Zeus," or a nation "under no god," because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.

  

  Alfred Goodwin
  • Religion
  • Profession

• Sometimes I'll get a premise, you know, for a book. In fact, I get those quite often. And I don't commit to it until I really know the voice of that character. It's almost as if the character is speaking to me.

  

  Kimberly Willis Holt
  • Character
  • Book

• I was very clear that I wanted to keep 'Thor' out of the rest of the Marvel universe for no less than the first six issues. And the success of the book, I think, speaks well to that decision.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Book
  • Success
  • Universe

• Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it-whole-heartedly-and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. sic

  

  Arthur Quiller-Couch
  • Writing