J. B. Priestley Quotes

Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

J. B. Priestley

• Writing
• Pregnancy

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Quotes to Explore

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Learn
  • Start

• I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.

  

  Ted Chiang
  • Writing
  • Science
  • Years

• Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • Writing
  • Being
  • Try

• I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

  

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Political

• I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

  

  Callie Khouri
  • Writing
  • Women
  • Feel

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• 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

• When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

  

  Calvin Trillin
  • Writing
  • You
  • Delivery

• As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Movie

• Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.

  

  Patrick Modiano
  • Writing
  • Day
  • Everyday

• Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • People
  • Work
  • Writing

• There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Writing
  • Rules
  • Three

• However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

  

  Wally Lamb
  • Writing
  • May
  • Think

• Book sales and teens reading is always a fantastic thing, but we should also be celebrating and consuming the huge wealth of U.K. and U.K.-based writing and illustrating talent. Authors such as Charlie Higson, Darren Shan, Holly Smale, Tanya Byrne, Catherine Johnson, Sophie Mckenzie, to name but a few.

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Reading

• I've had writing sessions with people, but I've never had one where you're just there, and you start making a song, and then it's too good to be true that something really cool will come out of this.

  

  Camila Cabello Fifth Harmony
  • People
  • Good
  • Writing

• After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

  

  Ornette Coleman
  • Up
  • Time
  • Writing

• 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

• Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

  

  Jackie Collins
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Done

• I thought, "Well, I'm writing about early childhood, so maybe it would make sense to write about late childhood as well, early adulthood." Those were my thoughts, and this was how this crazy book [Winter Journal] was composed. I've never seen a book with pictures like at the end, pictures related to things you've read before.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Crazy

• Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.

  

  Stephen Dunn
  • Important
  • Writing
  • Kind

• It is not necessary to maintain a conversation when we are in the presence of God. We can come into His presence and rest our weary souls in quiet contemplation of Him. Our groanings, which cannot be uttered, rise to Him and tell Him better than words how dependent we are upon Him.

  

  Ole Hallesby
  • God
  • Words
  • Rest

• You just can't know the feeling of being mother to a girl who you thought might die every single day - right up until the day she did.

  

  Adele Griffin
  • Mother
  • Girl
  • Die

• I love the most the students with troubled lives.

  

  Wally Lamb
  • Love
  • Students
  • Troubled

• Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

  

  J. B. Priestley
  • Writing
  • Pregnancy