Writing Quotes Extraordinaire - Cont.

You have all the scenes. Just go home and word it in.
~ Samuel Goldwyn to Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

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Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none. ~ Jules Renard

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Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armour and attacked a hot fudge sunday.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

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Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. ~ Rod Serling

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When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's works is all I can permit myself to contemplate. ~ John Steinbeck

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Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.
~ Stephen Leacock

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Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
~ William Strunk, Jr.

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I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. ~ Anna Quindlen

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Writing is like cooking...if you spill something, you should make it look like part of the act. ~ John Keeble

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We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over
and let the beautiful stuff out. ~ Ray Bradbury

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

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I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out
of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
(1868-1959)

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Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.
~ Heather Armstrong, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006

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Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.
~ Hilma Wolitzer

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Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue. ~ Jack Woodford

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For anyone who is: just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it'll work itself out. You just keep feeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing. ~ Robin McKinley

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The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. ~ Tom Clancy

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Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down. ~ W. B. Kinsella

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It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does. ~ William Faulkner

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You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great. ~ Les Brown

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If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Never let inexperience get in the way of ambition. ~ Terry Josephson

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If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous 'inspiration' will not come, write. If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper write. ~ J. B. Priestly

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There is no great writing, only great rewriting. ~ Justice Brandeis

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It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.
~ C. J. Cherryh

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It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. ~ Ernest Hemingway

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Don't fear making a mistake; fear failing to learn and move forward. ~ Pilip Humbert

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I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. ~ James A. Michener

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Only self-educated is educated. Others are merely taught.
~ Erno Paasilinna

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It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all. ~ Will Shetterly

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The only way to learn to write is to write. ~ Peggy Teeters

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"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake somebody." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow