Writing Quotes
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There are people who read Tolstoy or Dostoevski who do not insist that their endings be happy or pleasant or, at least, not be depressing. But if you're writing mysteries - oh, no, you can't have an ending like that. It must be tidy.
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If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.
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Travers's Mary Poppins was a natural phenomena, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. … philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing …
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Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.
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When people, women included, hear that you are writing, they assume that it is simply a hobby to fill in the time between doing the washing-up and the ironing. It couldn't possibly be a profession.
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I think that writing texts, publishing texts, selling texts in a physical book store is one of the important tools for breeding this new generation.
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I started writing stories in my spare time.
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It's painful to consider anything but writing.
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For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.
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I think I do pretty well with child characters. It's hard to write kids that are realistic, not annoying, and bring something to the story.
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I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.
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If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.
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Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.
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I got a job in advertising. So even though I was writing, I was always supporting myself. That's the thing that would matter for my father, who was absolutely a creature of the Great Depression.
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I myself have read the writings and teachings of the heretics, polluting my soul for a while with their abominable notions, though deriving this benefit: I was able to refute them for myself and loathe them even more.
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I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave." - from a letter to his mother Helen Pancake that Breece wrote in Charlottesville, where he was studying writing.
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I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.
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I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.
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The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.
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When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
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For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.
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Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
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I write a lot when I'm feeling bummed, but other times, you get locked in, and it's totally personal. If you're really low and writing, you're not thinking about anybody at all.
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By writing this, knowing that there was a chance he'd read it, i was up to my old tricks. Was I not sending an open letter hoping for some kind of response, in return?
