Think much, speak little, write less. ~French Proverb
#proverbs #french-proverbs #thinking #speaking #writing

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels. ~Shelby Foote
#quotes #shelby-foote #writing #books

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are. ~Quentin Tarantino
#quotes #quentin-tarantino #writing #character

Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved. ~Jan Karon
#quotes #jan-karon #love #writing

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault. ~Tanith Lee
#quotes #tanith-lee #mary-renault #writing

"Alien" asked ground-breaking questions about eco-politics and female empowerment. "The Matrix" delved deeper into the concept of perception versus reality than perhaps any other film I know. But for some reason, we tend not to remember the significance of their writing. ~Jason Reitman
#quotes #jason-reitman #writing #movies #reality

I try to write like the writers I admire, I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase. So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work. ~Brad Paisley
#quotes #brad-paisley #writing #music

Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets. ~Democritus
#quotes #democritus #writing #poetry #inspiration

I want to write the sort the book that my people want to read, even if the market is small. ~Robert Dessaix
#quotes #robert-dessaix #writing #books

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy. ~Tom Robbins
#quotes #tom-robbins #critic #writing

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all. ~Lydia Davis
#quotes #lydia-davis #russell-edson #style #writing #stories

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! ~William Makepeace Thackeray
#quotes #william-makepeace-thackeray #writing #history #books

I don't usually think of my writing as a "challenge" because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid "writer's block" all these years. ~Melody Carlson
#quotes #melody-carlson #writing #process

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it. ~J. G. Ballard
#quotes #j-g-ballard #writing #selling

Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy. ~David Ives
#quotes #david-ives #writing #comedy

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own. ~Peter Shaffer
#quotes #peter-shaffer #writing #novels

But every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood. ~Betsy Lerner
#quotes #betsy-lerner #writing #world

I'm a songwriter first. ~Carole King
#quotes #carole-king #music #writing

I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair. ~Viktor E. Frankl
#quotes #viktor-e-frankl #life #books #writing

I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying. ~Petrarch
#quotes #petrarch #writing #thinking #death

I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing. ~Greta Gerwig
#quotes #greta-gerwig #writing #acting

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing. ~Tom Jenkinson
#quotes #tom-jenkinson #squarepusher #one-direction #writing #music

Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: "For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you." ~William S. Burroughs
#quotes #william-s-burroughs #writing

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose; anything goes. ~Cole Porter
#quotes #cole-porter #writing

How much money you get, depends on lots of extraneous things. It depends on how good you are at turning poetry into a marketable product, which is something it was never supposed to be. That's why many people suppose that the better the poet you are the lower your income should be, and that's probably true. ~Robert Bringhurst
#quotes #robert-bringhurst #writing #poetry #money