'The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.'
'Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.'
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
'Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.'
“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.”
“I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”
“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”
“That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”
'Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.'
“Writing is hard work and bad for the health.”
“There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.”
“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.”
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.'
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
“I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.”
“You can make anything by writing.”
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
'You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.'
'A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.'
'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.'
'It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.'
'The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.'
'Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.'
'If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.'
“Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.”
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.”
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”
“I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.”
Quiz Playlist
Details
Clickable: Select answers by clicking on text or image buttons
In order to create a playlist on Sporcle, you need to verify the email address you used during registration. Go to your Sporcle Settings to finish the process.
