On Writing
Words to Write By.......
Is it truly so? that....
The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword(?) - Edward Bulwer-Lytton in Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy (1839)
Well, then....
You must write from the depths of your soul! - Friedrich Bhaer in Little Women (1994)
Don't talk about writing. To "write" is a verb. Write!. - Anonymous
How vain it is to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau
A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return. - Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. "Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "Well, I'm a panda", he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation: 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.' - Lynne Truss (From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation")
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. - Francis Rene de Chateaubriand
If you have other things in your life - family, friends, good productive day work - these can interact with your writing. And the sum will be all the richer. - David Brin
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves. - Gilbert Highet
Reading usually precedes writing, and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. - Susan Sontag
We do not write because we want to; We write because we have to. - W. Somerset Maughn
Specificity is generosity,” someone once said. So, notice what you notice – especially through your five senses – and write it down. Be a generous writer; give details as if they were gifts – from you to the reader. - Judy Reeves (A Writer’s Book of Days)
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The reason one write isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A dramatist's job is to examine humanity. - Ang Lee
Never fear the audience nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all.... never, never, never bore the living hell out of it. - Noel Coward
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think. - Lord Byron
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. - Robertson Davies
There is only one person a writer should pay attention to. It's not any damn critic. It's the reader! - William Styron
It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper everyday and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them. - Truman Capote
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. - G.K. Chestertown
If writing seems hard, it's because it IS hard. It's one of the hardest things people do. - William Knowlton Zinsser
I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others. - Sherwood Anderson
Not ideas about the thing, but the thing itself. - Wallace Stevens
If you use the word color, it ruins the word blue. - Tony Quagliano (One for William Carlos Williams)
Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence. And then, very quietly, as quiet as light, meaning returns. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. - Jeannette Winterson (Lighthousekeeping from Writers at the Beach website)
Variety is not just the spice of life, it's the essence of great art. - Imal Desberats
An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told. - Shakespeare (King Richard III)
The words charm the ear as much as what is said charms the mind. - William J. Martz
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance on the shimmy, and you've got an audience. - Diogenes
We have to read a great book more than once to realize how consistently good the prose is, because the first time around, and often even the second, we're too involved in the story to notice. - B.R. Myers (A Reader's Manifesto)
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. - Mark Twain
When you must sit, it should only be to play a musical instrument, to watch your children, to look out upon the fashioned expanse of your manual labors, to eat your meals, or to write. - Baxter S. Marbury
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx
Writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public. - Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)
No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith. - J.B. Priestly
It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. - Virginia Woolf
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. - Tom Clancy
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. - Gloria Steinem
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. - T.S. Eliot
We need to put the lightening of our stories and our heritage into the jars of our children’s’ minds so that they in turn can pass them on to future generations. - Patricia Polacco (When Lightning Comes in a Jar)
Press on: Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. - Calvin Coolidge
What is written without effort is read without pleasure. - Samuel Johnson
Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning. - George Bernard Shaw
You always pass failure on the way to success. - Mickey Rooney
Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live, we die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent, really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. - Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones )
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed." - Ernest Hemingway
The "Secrets" of Success (and yes....they apply to writing too!) - From A. Isip's collection
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.”" - Oscar Wilde
Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.… What we are trying to do is find a way to release the truth that lies in all of us…. “What do I really think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?” and begin to pour this on paper. - Ray Bradbury (Zen and the Art of Writing)
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.... - William Wordsworth
The Last Word: "The words of the wise ones are like oxgoads, and just like nails driven in are those indulging in collections [of sentences]; they have been given from one shepherd. As regards anything besides these, my son, take a warning: To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion [to them] is wearisome to the flesh." - Ecclesiastes 12:11-12