Quotes From Your Favorite Authors

LOTLOF · Mar 15, 2014

I love quotes.

To me they represent some great thought or advice that has been boiled down to a few words or sentences. Are there quotes from your favorite authors that you find particularly inspiring or amusing?

The following are all from Stephen King. He was one of the people who I first followed, and his stories helped get me interested in writing. While I know some do not consider him a literary great, he represents what I aspire to be. Someone who has spent his whole life writing books that hooked and entertained their audience.

'If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.'

'If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.'

'We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.'

'Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.'

'Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.'

'I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.'

bearilou · Mar 15, 2014

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it. — David Sedaris

Easy reading is damn hard writing. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham

As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I’m not sure that I’m going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says ‘you are nothing’, I will be a writer. — Hunter S. Thompson

I too am not a bit tamed,
I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1891

Permission to write poorly does not produce poor writing, but its opposite. We become a channel for the story that wants to be told through us. Rather than impressing our reader with our important writing, we can impress with our willingness to be truthful on the page. — Alan Watt, The 90-day Novel

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. — Robert Benchley

Fiction is the stylized rendition of reality for an emotional effect. — James Scott Bell

*yawps barbarically*

Snowstorm · Mar 15, 2014

You never run out of creativity. The more you use the more you have. ~ Maya Angelou

Brutal Mustang · Mar 15, 2014

Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve. -J.K. Rowling

guttersquid · Mar 15, 2014

"Failure is not an option; it is a certainty. Embrace it."

"Simplicity is a foundation, not a limitation."

"What is seen as brilliance by some will be seen as crap by others. Ignore them all."

"No one can tell you how or what to write, though everyone will."

"You will never be the writer you wish to be. Strive to achieve the abilities of the writers you admire. When you fail, what's left over is the writer you are."

"Spend an hour debating whether or not to use that adverb, and know that if you do, someone will call it lazy writing."

-- author unattributed

bearilou · Mar 15, 2014

guttersquid said:
"Spend an hour debating whether or not to use that adverb, and know that if you do, someone will call it lazy writing."

SO TRUE

Mr Flibble · Mar 15, 2014

I've always like this Practhett one on thinking through the consequences of your worldbuilding:

You are allowed to make pigs fly, but you must take into account the depredations on the local bird life and the need for people in heavily over-flown areas to carry stout umbrellas at all times

Manuel Royal · Mar 15, 2014

One of my favorites is a famous one from Mark Twain:

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

dondomat · Mar 15, 2014

A big one from Yuri Nikitin

A Russian fantasy/sci-fi juggernaut, sells a million a year. This is from his 'How to Become a Writer' book.
Translation by yours truly over morning tea.

"So you’ve found an original topic. A stunning idea. Splendid characters have been created. Various separate episodes have been written down, and they are awash in great prose, colorful voice, etc. The author can see that he is on the way of creating a first class book, so does his wife and mother in law as they read the ready bits in the kitchen; his buddies are impressed too.

However, while the novel has not been written to the end, edited, and distributed throughout various outlets…until that moment not only are you not a genius—you’re not even a writer. And the rest of the world, as indignant as that may make you, is perceiving you as a not-writer, and quite justly so.

How many have fallen by the wayside, not reaching the finishing line? No one can say. But we can say with certainty that many more are the fallen, than those who have ran the whole distance. And a lot of those were already running around with a half-finished novel in hand, trying to convince the world what writers they are.

Which is why, when you read a book, don’t make a face, don’t start telling everyone how you can do better. Yes, you’re certain of it. Yes, you have the talent, even perhaps the time. But until you’ve walked the walk, the weak novel you’re dismissing exists because someone has ran the whole distance—and you haven’t.

Sure, you’re certain that you can reach the finishing line too, once you start. But many people enter the race at the start—very few reach the finishing line. And with those who fall by the wayside it matters not a bit who ran more beautifully, who had better technique, who fell away on the first mile, and who gave up inches before the finishing line. They all didn't make it.

I’m not saying you should be modest, far from it. In your writerly schemes you should be arrogant, self-confident, ready to conquer all peaks and solve all problems!

But no matter how beautifully and quickly you’ve been running up to now—and literature is a marathon, not a sprint—do not demand laurels until you’ve cleared the last inches. And don’t publicly compare your half-finished things with published such. Bad taste. Low class.

Until you’ve polished and published your book…it does not exist. It’s not there. And if on the way home—knock on wood—you get mangled by a car, or a flower pot smashes your skull, or you get all stabbed up by a random madman, your book, which was supposed to show them all, will never have existed.

You must run the whole distance—only then can you take a breather. Until the book has been published—you’re not a writer."

Sunflowerrei · Mar 15, 2014

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”--Jane Austen

"You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say."--F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Writing well is the best revenge."--Dorothy Parker

Ken · Mar 16, 2014

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
- Nietzsche

cmi0616 · Mar 18, 2014

I have so many, but off the top of my head:

"Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me."- David Foster Wallace

"You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do."- David Foster Wallace

"When you stay in your room and rage or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there's a very real danger that you might end up loving some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?"- Jonathan Franzen

"What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood."- Saul Bellow

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing."- Sylvia Plath

"Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me that you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love--or what good is it?"- Saul Bellow

And, lest I forget what I contend is the most badass line in all of literature:

"Let either of you breathe a word of this, or even the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night with a pointy reckoning that will shudder you."- Arthur Miler

quicklime · Mar 18, 2014

There are two great tragedies in life; one is not getting exactly what you want, the other is getting it - Oscar Wilde, from my memory and almost certainly butchered a bit

FWIW there's entire PAGES of Wilde quotes and the guy is absolutely fucking hysterical. A lot of them made their way, in some version, into Lord Henry in The Portrait of Dorian Gray but if you ever want to blow an hour educating yourself google "Oscar Wilde Quotes" and pull like the first 4 or 5 pages that come up and read them. Wilde was a bit of a misanthrope and a lot of a playful dork who liked to pretend he was a misanthrope, but his quotes range from hilarious to brilliantly hilarious.

JustSarah · Mar 18, 2014

“Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.”
-- P.L. Travers

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." -- William Gibson

"Don't you know everybody's got a fairyland of their own?" -- P.L. Travers

I'm still building up quotes, because I need to read more.:/

Tromboli · Mar 18, 2014

cmi0616 said:
"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing."- Sylvia Plath

Ooh! I like this one! Very interesting comment on human nature. I might use this some time *puts in back pocket*

LOTLOF · Mar 21, 2014

“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” – Winston Churchill (It counts, he wrote history.)

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde

“Women are made to be loved, not understood.” - Oscar Wilde

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” - Oscar Wilde

“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” - Oscar Wilde

“He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.” – Douglas Adams

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”- Mark Twain

Quotes From Your Favorite Authors

LOTLOF

bearilou

DenturePunk writer

Snowstorm

Baby plot bunneh sniffs out a clue

Brutal Mustang

Loves interplanetary chaos.

guttersquid

I agree with Roxxsmom.

bearilou

DenturePunk writer

Mr Flibble

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

Manuel Royal

dondomat

Sunflowerrei

Ken

cmi0616

quicklime

all out of fucks to give

JustSarah

Tromboli

Hopelessly Hopeful

LOTLOF