Quotes about writing

[Snowleopard]

I love quotes.
Below are several from: Writers on Writing by Jon Winokur.
I love his books - all quotes on various subjects from Zen to Love and, of course,
his first - The Portable Curmudgeon.

One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.
Christopher Isherwood.

Get black on white.
Guy de Maupassant

Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.
Jonathan Swift

ON BEGINNINGS

I always begin with a character, or characters, and then try to think up as much action
for them as possible.
John Irving

I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen.  I just have a very general idea, and then the
thing develops as I write.
Aldous Huxley

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.
Patrick Dennis

ON CHARACTERS

You can never know enough about your characters.
W. Somerset Maugham

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head and...as you get older, you become more
skillful in casting them.
Gore Vidal

My characters exasperate me.
Anita Brookner

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have
to act accordingly.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

ON THEIR COLLEAGUES

Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Oscar Wilde

The more I think you over the more it comes home to me what an
unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!
H.Gl. Wells to George Bernard Shaw

Hammet took murder out of the parlor and put it in the alley where
it belongs.
Raymond Chandler

I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Edna St.Vincent Millay,
unhappily in my own horrible sneakers.
Dorothy Parker

ON FAME

Fame is a bee
It has a song--
It has a sting--
Ah, too, it has a wing.
Emily Dickinson

ON FICTION

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain

[cenwolfgirl]

wow snow that awesome thank you

[Snowleopard]

You're welcome.
There are a lot more quotes in that book.
I just picked out some of my favorites.
Some of the ones on their fellow writers are enough
to curl your hair.  Pretty tough.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

"Writing is easy. You just stare at a piece of paper until your forehead bleeds." -- Douglas Adams.

And here are three that I think go well together:

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily.  That is what fiction means."
                                           -- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

"The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily.  That is what tragedy means."
                                           -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

"Of course it's a happy ending.  Not everybody is dead."
                                           -- Iain Banks

[Snowleopard]

Very good.
There's another version of the bleeding forehead one.

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood
form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler

There's nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Red Smith