May 2, 2011

Writing Quotes

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy


And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath


I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard


What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931


Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth


Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov


The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin, Think, February 1963

What's your favorite writing quote?  I'm sure I have some small gift or another to give away to some lucky commenter!  I'll draw for a winner Wednesday.

2 comments:

Mary Preston said...

My favorite is from Winston Churchill: “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

marypres@gmail.com

Anna Kathryn Lanier said...

You're the only one to comment, Marybelle, so I guess you win! I never did choose a prize, so I'll just put a surprise in your box of books from the April contest win.