Top Writing Quotes

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with co...

Writing Definition

(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Write

(n.) The act or art of forming letters and characters on paper, wood, stone, or other material, for the purpose of recording the ideas which characters and words express, or of communicating them to others by visible signs.

(n.) Anything written or printed; anything expressed in characters or letters

(n.) Any legal instrument, as a deed, a receipt, a bond, an agreement, or the like.

(n.) Any written composition; a pamphlet; a work; a literary production; a book; as, the writings of Addison.

(n.) An inscription.

(n.) Handwriting; chirography.

Sharpen your life always; even though it will come to an end like a pencil, we have to keep on writing

Breaking through writer's block is like thinking out of the box: Both require an ability to imagine a world outside your four walls or rearranging them to get a better view.

Writing is an abstract art of drawing pictures of the conscious and subconscious mind with words.

Go thy way, and tell my people, the people of thy Lord God what manner of things, and how great wonders of the Lord thy God, thou hast seen.

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I...

Creativity is magic in the making.

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't refl...

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure.

Sometimes to self-discover you must self-destruct.

Hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HI...

Your audience is your adversary. If you don't have one get one - imagine it. Imagine it now. To whom is your story addressed and why? Audience is always a creative act of the imagination. You can't te...

I'm interested in things women do that aren't spoken about. Manto's stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster.

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of...

All the geniuses and greats are really just nerds with experience.

Nothing listens as well as a blank page.

In the end, we begin.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones...