All Quotes By Tag: Writer

“An inspirational writer’s life is an open book that never shuts. Choose your words carefully.”

“Well, Betsy,” he said, “your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith’s trunk for a desk. That’s fine. You need a desk. I’ve often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can’t understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. “”Bob!” said Mrs. Ray. “You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry.””Cry, eh?” said Mr. Ray, grinning. “In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you’re going to be a writer.”Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.”But if you’re going to be a writer,” he went on, “you’ve got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics.”

“If you’re a writer, the answer to everything is yes.”

“A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run”

“Oh how I enjoy the nightThe still silence is something spiritualCaffeined by the incessant chirping of the cricketsMy thoughts are a waterfall flowing out of the darknessThe cock crows; we sense the dawnI quicken my hand before I burn out at first lightWhat did you create for us?The sun keeps us awake The dead air calls us at nightWhen are we to rest?”

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.”

“What happens in my next chapter depends on whether I wake up feeling creative or murderous.”

“That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren’t made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.”

“I FOUND MYSELF LIVING FOR THE ONES WHO LOST THEIR LIVES”

“And so I just kept writing to myself.”

“I doubt I was much of a storyteller, but I would have put that smile in my book. On page 104, right next to the image of the Ward. I would have written it on my heart. I would have proofread it a thousand times under a thousand moons until a thousand tears thoroughly rationalized what it meant to me. Each time for when I’d met the darkness, and then succumbed. The smile read “you can’t break me’”—bold and in italics.”

“Writing is hard work, and if anything’s true about the process, it’s that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What’s less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I’ve changed the cat little because I didn’t know what my characters were going to say next.”

“The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.”

“I fix the cramped, lined pageswith my curious stare. How do youcome to exist?”

“I’m either going to be a writer or a bum.”