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Quotations by Subject: Writing
(Related Subjects: Books, Quotations, Journalism)
Showing quotations 61 to 90 of 126 quotations in our collections

I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn't end, I'll go to a French movie. A movie has to be complete within itself; it can't just build off the first one or play variations.: Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly, 08-30-13
I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.: Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly, 08-30-13
If I wrote what I really think, I would be so sad all the time. We create to fill a gap - not just to avoid the idea of dying, it's to fill some particular gap in ourselves.: Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly, 08-30-13
It's very important that we start creating new content again. We can only build on nostalgia so much before we have nothing left to build on.: Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly, 08-30-13
You go to movies to see people you love suffer - that's why you go to the movies. You don't go to see a movie about a guy who already knows he has a wonderful life.: Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly, 08-30-13
No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of interest does to a new author!: Judith Brocklehurst, Darcy And Anne
Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.: Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.: Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.: Junot Diaz, O Magazine, November 2009
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.: Katherine Paterson, The Spying Heart, 1989
Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.: L. M. Montgomery (1874 - 1942), Anne of Green Gables, 1908
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.: Leo Rosten (1908 - )
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.: Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
Learn as much by writing as by reading.: Lord Acton
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.: Lord Brabazon (1884 - 1964)
First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.: Martin Myers
When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.: Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been, 2010
There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively.: Min Kim, Better Blogging Brainstorming, SXSW 2006
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.: Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.: Peter De Vries
In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.: Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD), Natural History
There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well.: Pliny the Younger (62 AD - 114 AD), Letters
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.: Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 07-03-05
I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice.: Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Commencement Speech, 2008
The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.: Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Commencement Speech, 2008
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.: Ray Bradbury (1920 - ), advice to writers
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.: Raymond Chandler (1888 - 1959)
The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that it’s not about me. It’s about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, 'I loved how you said…' and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.: Reverend Sean Parker Dennison, Ministrare, 04-07-2006
Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.: Rhys Alexander, Writing Gooder, 12-09-05
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.: Ring Lardner (1885 - 1933), "How to Write Short Stories"

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Showing quotations 61 to 90 of 126 quotations in our collections
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