#writ

The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision. ↗

— Jewel Kilcher

#had #i #most #respect #vision

You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking. ↗

— Wayne Kramer

#anyone #anything #anywhere #because #being

I have always distrusted memoir. I tend to write my memoirs through my fiction. It's easier to get to the truth by not claiming that you are speaking it. Some things can be said in fiction that can never be said in memoir. ↗

— Armistead Maupin

#claiming #distrusted #easier #fiction #get

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. ↗

— James M. Barrie

#compares #diary #every #every man #his

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#internet #online-writing #social-networking #twitter #age

In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#story #writing #age

Make a written list of everything you love. ↗

— Rhonda Byrne

#list #love #make #written #you

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#dreams

Every writer is a writer of the generation before. ↗

— Wilfrid Sheed

#every #generation #writer

All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius. ↗

— P.D. James

#romance-novels #writing #age