All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That’s because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.)”

“The written word has its limits and its challenges, for the primal sound in the whole world is that made by the human voice, and the likeness of this human voice must be rendered in dots and strokes…Yet I never forget that the voice, too, is important…Don’t mumble or hesitate. Speak…in a loud voice, clearly, and without fear.”

“So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it –– we all get to dream.”

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

“‎I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that is the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”

“I write what I want to read. If I were to write what I know, I’d be staring at a blank page forever.”

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

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That’s why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”

“…slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favored museum to my own drafting table. Pressing me to close Songs of Innocence in order to experience, as blake, a glimpse of the divine that may also become a poem.That is the decisive power of a singular work:a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call.”

“A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.”

“From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: “There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein one dropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery had delivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate or gum. And so with the editorial machine. One slot brought checks and the other brought rejection slips. So far he had found only the latter slot.”

“I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.”

“You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.”

“..slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favored museum to my own drafting table. Pressing me to close Songs of Innocence in order to experience, as Blake, a glimpse of the divine that may also become a poem.That is the decisive power of a singular work:a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call”