Writing Quotes
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What's wrong with it is, it lowers, to say the least, the credibility of the magazine. And if I were writing for The New Republic, I would feel diminished because the owner had done such a thing fire a journalist.
Nat Hentoff
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I think it's probably true that creative people are touched by melancholy more than the average person, and to the extent that delving into that shadow world produces good work, I'm all for it. But I think you have to be able to step back from the work, and say, "Look how miserable I felt. Look how beautifully I wrote about it. Now I'm going to get an iced coffee and chat with a friend." Writing should be a way out of despair.
David Starkey
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You have to know human behaviour … And the quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You’ll never write above what you know about people.
Tony Gilroy
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At the time of writing, I don't write for my friends or myself either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.
Eudora Welty
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I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.
Judith Krantz
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One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.
Carolyn Wheat
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I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.
Etgar Keret
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During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of politicaldiscourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were therequirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.
Michel Foucault
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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
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There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.
Willow Smith
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When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.
David Sedaris
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Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.
Hugo Black
