Writing Quotations Help!

[ladyseishou]

I hope to post an inspirational quotation for each day of November like we had last year (here's an example). So I would like to ask for your help Nano Writer!

Please respond to this post and tell me your favorite writing quotations. One or several, I need them all! Thanks!

Comments

[yifu]

A few from me:

"It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them."
-Julian Barnes

"You might be writing someone’s favorite book." - Shonna Slayton

"Writing is tricky thing, because everyone assumes that the act of writing to move and amuse people with words is somehow only slightly more difficult than the act of writing to place words into vaguely coherent sentences. This is like saying that playing professional baseball is only slightly more difficult than hitting a beach ball with a stick." - John Scalzi

"If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money." - Andrei Tarkovsky

"All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.'"
- Umberto Eco

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." - E.L. Doctorow

"The preoccupation of the novelist: how to capture the living moments, was answered by the diary. You write while you are alive. You do not preserve them in alcohol until the moment you are ready to write about them." - Anais Nin

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

"And she had no plot. Or did not recognise those plots she had." - A.S. Byatt, Still Life

[ladyseishou]

Thanks! These are great!

[dragonjournal]

Maybe look here?

I don't really have any, save my favorite icon: "Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum." - Graycie Harmon

[charamei]

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.
Rita Mae Brown

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

And the one in my icon, of course... don't know who/where that originates from, though.

[ladyseishou]

Thanks for the link!

[ladyseishou]

The C.S. Lewis is a favorite of mine as well. Your icon may be a Ray Bradbury quotation. Over my desk I have written (in as large as letters as I could): What does your character want? It is the key to every good story.

[punkinelf]

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. ~ John Osborne

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. ~ Samuel Johnson

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~ Elmore Leonard

One of my favorites:

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov

Also, I "won" in 2009. I hope many will friend me this year, please! My NaNo name is ginmuse. Thanks!

[punkinelf]

Sorry. Forgot to add I got these from here.

[ladyseishou]

Those are great quotes! Thanks!

[ladyseishou]

Very cool site! Thanks for the link!

[guardian_of_hope]

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain


Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. ~Author Unknown


Someone linked the quote garden, but I like these. Also:

I am not all here. ~Terry Brooks, "Sometimes the Magic Works, Lessons of a Writing Life"

The muse wispers when she will, and you can't tell her to come back later because she might not come back at all. ~Terry Brooks, "Sometimes the Magic Works, Lessons of a Writing Life"



Anyone who's ever tried to read a writing book to be a better writer should check "Sometimes the Magic Works" out. It's part autobiography, but it really shows Terry Brook's unique sense of humor and skill. He has the best way to explain "Show, Don't Tell" I've ever seen.

[ladyseishou]

Wonderful all! Thanks!

[cheyinka]

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells. — Flannery O'Connor

[ladyseishou]

This really resonates with me. Thanks!

[cheyinka]

It's my favorite positive writing-related quote of hers :)

(My other favorite is Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. which is not all that inspirational!)