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Writers’ Quotes on Writing – Dozen Four
By Deb
This next set of 12 quotes from famous authors on the writing life — a continuation of my 7-part series on writers’ quotes on writing — can again be tweeted, to pass on to your friends. Share this link on Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon, too. (http://www.debgallardo.com/virtuoso/1064/writers-quotes-on-writing-dozen-four) And feel free to comment below which are your favorite quotes. I just hope I counted right…
In nearly all good fiction, the basic – all but inescapable – plot form is this: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose, or draw. ~ John Gardner
If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages. ~ William Campbell Gault
Half of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at. ~ David Gerrold
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs. ~Christopher Hampton
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. ~ Oliver Herford
A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing. ~ Eugene Ionesco
Half my life is an act of revision. ~ John Irving
It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Related Posts
- Writers’ Quotes on Writing – Dozen Number Six
- Writing Tips from the Experts
- Writers’ Quotes on Writing – Dozen Number Three
- Writers’ Quotes on Writing – The Last Dozen
- Writers’ Quotes on Writing – The First Dozen
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