All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.”

“Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.”

“Living is about capturing the essence of things. I go through my life every day with a vial, a vial wherein can be found precious essential oils of every kind! The priceless, fragrant oils that are the essence of my experiences, my thoughts. I walk inside a different realm from everybody else, in that I am existing in the essence of things; every time there is reason to smile, I hold out my glass vial and capture that drop of oil, that essence, and then I smile. And that is why I have smiled, and so you and I may be smiling at the same time but I am smiling because of that one drop of cherished, treasured oil that I have extracted. When I write, I find no need to memorize an idea, a plot, a sequence of things: no. I must only capture the essence of a feeling or a thought and once I have inhaled that aroma, I know that I have what I need.”

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

“What are you burning?” On a glance, just some papers.”I write in a journal.” He spoke below his breath, so that his words weren’t quite for me. “Because I like to see everything written down. So that I know it really happened. That I wasn’t just making it up. Then I read it and memorize it. And then I have to destroy the hard evidence.”I thought of my own journal, the muddle of every page. All those unfiltered, lunatic letters to Sean Ryan.”What is it, exactly, that you need to destroy?””Everything that I don’t want to be true.”

“A good idea always attracts other good ideas.”

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”

“Imagination is what you do with your inspiration.”

“The first duty of an Author is — I conceive — a faithful allegiance to Truth and Nature; his second, such a conscientious study of Art as shall enable him to interpret eloquently and effectively the oracles delivered by those two great deities.— Charlotte Bronte”

“It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.”

“The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience … The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won’t sue.”

“Our willingness to write truthfully brings the story to life.”

“You never know who you’re inspiring or uninspiring. People notice more than you think.”

“…the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?”

“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”