Writing Quotes
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Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.
J. G. Ballard
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The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be.
Garth Risk Hallberg
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Writing is like a rollercoaster ride for me, an adventure. I love exploring the world through 'playing' people who are absolutely nothing like me.
Karen Traviss
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I thought I would write something that would make some people uncomfortable. . . . What intrigued me, I think, was the idea of women of my own generation who were successful, intelligent, coming to power and suddenly in the public arena. I started to think about what they are allowed and what they are not allowed.
Wendy Wasserstein
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The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie.
Maggie Carey
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I feel like, genre-wise, the walls are coming down in Nashville. There are so many writers who have moved to town from all walks of life. There's this immense respect for country, but there are pop songwriters, R&B. Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
Maren Morris
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My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.
Kathe Koja
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Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
Kate Atkinson
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Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.
R. A. Salvatore
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The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.
Kevin Spacey
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I didn't want to spend the next thirty years writing about bad things happening in the same small town - not least of all because people would begin to wonder why anyone still lives there!
Karin Slaughter
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I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing.
Kathryn Harrison
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When I'm not working in a professional capacity, I'm writing, and when I'm at home, it's a way of having contact with people or communicating.
Jessie Cave
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I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
Irvine Welsh
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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I'm willing and I'm eager, and not just about my writing - I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.
Wayne Dyer
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I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the novel is a local thing.
Zadie Smith
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All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.
Walter Mosley
