# Quotations about writing.



## Olly Buckle (Feb 23, 2019)

There is an excellent thread started by Courtjester, "Your favourite quotes, your own and other people's", The aim of this one is to create a thread of quotations that give advice to writers from writers. If you do happen to notice one of our own members giving excellent advice in quotable form I guess that would be a bonus  

Mark Twain is one of my favourites and I will start with this:-

“I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop. ”

There is a good truth in there, and yet …  Well for a start off that is true if you have reached the enviable position of being paid by the word, but he uses both words saying he does not use them. I have a vision of Mark Twain's shade laughing himself sick at all the earnest scholars quoting him, "You fools, it's an oxymoron."  Somehow that strikes me as just like his sense of humour.


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 23, 2019)

Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.” 
― Stephen King.


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## escorial (Feb 23, 2019)

grammars a tool not a law...pessoa


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## Amnesiac (Feb 24, 2019)

Indeed, grammar is a tool, however, commas are important. It's the difference between:
"Let's eat grandma!" and, "Let's eat, grandma!"
:biggrin:


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## bazz cargo (Feb 24, 2019)

For sage advice try the Writers and Artists Yearbook.


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 24, 2019)

bazz cargo said:


> For sage advice try the Writers and Artists Yearbook.


True, however it is the minority of the book, most of it is listings of publications, agents and such which barely changes year to year. It is a huge and expensive book, the sections of advice mostly don't go out of date, and there are people who get it every year, so well worth looking out for in charity shops.
Back to quotations,
Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices. David Crystal


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## Amnesiac (Feb 26, 2019)

"I like eating my friends and painting." versus "I like eating, my friends, and painting."

In the first example, Dahmer happens to be snacking on someone's arm whilst painting a beautiful sunset.


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## Terry D (Feb 26, 2019)

My favorite Twain quote about writing:

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 27, 2019)

this is the intro to ch 48 of Mansfield park, Jane Austen.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest


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## escorial (Feb 27, 2019)

a comma a day keeps cannibals away


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## Earp (Mar 3, 2019)

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

 - Dorothy Parker


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## Terry D (Mar 3, 2019)

Ray Bradbury on writing: "Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down."


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 3, 2019)

Another Mark Twain truism.

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it."


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## Earp (Mar 4, 2019)

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.


 - Ray Bradbury


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## Terry D (Mar 7, 2019)

Stephen King: "First I create characters the reader can care about, then I turn the monsters loose."


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## Earp (Mar 21, 2019)

The writer's life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody's fault. You chose it.


 - Bill Barich


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## gene (Mar 23, 2019)

Writing is about how you feel, not how other people feel. Write for yourself. and let the world judge not.


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## Chris Stevenson (Mar 26, 2019)

My own:

A Writer is…

A humble, receptive student and negotiator

But the heart that beats within his/her breast

Is a determined savage

Unfamiliar with surrender


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 28, 2019)

"How come stealing from one book is plagiaism, but stealing from many is research?"
Alfred E Neuman.


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## SilverMoon (Mar 28, 2019)

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” 
- Joyce Carol Oates*

*


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## Olly Buckle (May 25, 2019)

"If you weren't stupider than a mud duck you would know that every kick to bad writing is by that much a help to the good."

It's Ezra Pound in a letter. Something to remember when someone gives you heavy crit, it's all for the good really.


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## Olly Buckle (May 31, 2019)

When I split infinitives, God damn it, I split them so they will remain split.

Raymond Chandler.


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## Megan Pearson (Jun 3, 2019)

“The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to  the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for  the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose  the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than  it seems.”   

  ―        Sol Stein


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## Chris Stevenson (Jun 3, 2019)

From my friend and mentor, James, the Yog--"Money flows toward the writer."  (Well, not so much anymore, eh? We're having trouble with that one." But we forge on!


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## rarie (Oct 26, 2019)

'Write hard and clear about what hurts.'
-Ernest Hemingway


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## KenTR (Oct 27, 2019)

"I'm a writer, you monsters! I create for a living! (_points to head_) _This_ is my uniform! _This_ is how I serve the common man! _This_..."

(_gets punched in the face_​)

- Barton Fink


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## Sustrai (Oct 29, 2019)

Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy;
bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

_*-Virginia Woolf-*_


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