The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. —William Saroyan More about this quote Tags: advice laughter living writing death taste food anger sleep Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
All writing, even the clumsy kind, exposes in its loops and slants a yearning deeper than an intention, the soul of the writer flopping on the clothes-peg of his exclamation mark. —Paul Theroux More about this quote Tags: writing soul yearning intention Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We see achievement as purposeful and monolithic, like the sculpting of a massive tree trunk that has first to be brought from the forest and then shaped by long labor to assert the artist's vision, rather than something crafted from odds and ends, like a patchwork quilt, and lovingly used to warm different nights and bodies. —Mary Catherine Bateson More about this quote Tags: purpose vision art work achievement Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things. —Pablo Picasso More about this quote Tags: God art animals Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
He who has made a thousand things and he who has made none, both feel the same desire: to make something. —Antonio Porchia More about this quote Tags: desire making Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for. —Ruth Prawer Jhabvala More about this quote Tags: hope writing trying Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time. —Kurt Vonnegut More about this quote Tags: intelligence writing refinement Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge. —Charles Bukowski More about this quote Tags: writing necessity suicide Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people. I've gotten back at lawyers, prosecutors, judges, law professors, and politicians. I just line 'em up and shoot 'em. —John Grisham More about this quote Tags: writing fiction politicians lawyers Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. —Jessamyn West More about this quote Tags: writing escape art punishment Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I lived in the midst of an affectionate, charming family, and I am sure that there is no greater obstacle to a person who is just beginning to write. —Katharine Butler Hathaway More about this quote Tags: writing family affection Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
She had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive, or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive, and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom. —Richard Brautigan More about this quote Tags: love emotion promises writers Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I have spent a good many years . . . being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. —Stephen King More about this quote Tags: talent writing poetry fiction shame Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I have twenty-one pages, unusable, unprintable, destructive of the book as my mind still partly sees it, contradictory of character and inconsistent in tone. But I am undoubtedly started. —Janet Burroway More about this quote Tags: writing art work beginning Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Yes, illness and grief were a part of us, indefinitely — but so, too, were love and the ability to listen and learn over time, however long that might be. —Sarah Silbert More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email