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
If I were God, I would make a world just like this one, where everyone comes raw and naked and dependent into it; where everyone enters bloody between the legs or through the cut belly of a woman; where nothing is for certain and there is so much to learn. I would make the world unfair as this world is unfair, because only in a world like this one is it possible that maybe the rich will take down their fences; maybe the poor will get together and break the fences down; maybe those who know how to read will teach those who don't. Maybe the fed will feed the hungry. Maybe the lion will lie down by the lamb. —Pat Schneider More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There are no miracles. There are no trumpets, no fanfares, no absolutions.But she sees now that there are brief moments of, if not goodness, then kindness: a thoughtful gesture, a friendly word, an absence of anger now and again. —Christiane Buuck More about this quote Tags: kindness good anger miracles friendliness thoughtfulness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
We go on, she told me, because we must. We go on because our life is bigger than the grief. We cry when we need to cry, and get angry when we need to get angry. God will forgive us when we curse him. We go on, she said, until we finally have a day when the pain is not so great. —Rosa R. More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
This night I am here: in this bruised self, in this bruised world. —Joe Wilkins More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Walking my woods, I see every tree, every sprig of jewelweed, every salamander, and, yes, every snake trying to hold on in a paved world, and I'm reminded exactly what hard work survival is. —Dana Wildsmith More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
When I think about the fact that a nation has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose. —Jarvis Jay Masters More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email