#writing

I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean. ↗

— Jodie Foster

#action hero #doing #hero #i #i see

The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but. ↗

— Ben Fountain

#dancing #did #done #following #future

Not all great writers may seem great to us, regardless of how often and how hard we try to see their virtues. I know, for example, that Trollope is considered to have been a brilliant novelist, but I’ve never quite understood what makes his fans so fervent. Still, our tastes change as we ourselves change and grow older, and perhaps in a few months or so Trollope will have become my new favorite writer. ↗

— Francine Prose

#change

My writing style has changed dramatically over the years, growing increasingly clean and exact. I like to think that I'm still improving -- that each book I write is a new personal best. ↗

— Barbara Delinsky

#change

I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#believes #both #disconcerting #discover #fascinating

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps. ↗

— Elizabeth George

#america #art #art form #because #dying

No, originally I thought that writing articles would keep me from having to see a psychiatrist, but I became even more depressed as a result. ↗

— Theo Van Gogh

#became #depressed #even #having #i

What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be--not seem--outrageous, independent, anarchical. That one be thoroughly disciplined--as a means of being spontaneous. That one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures placed on one to lie about one’s own experience. For in the same way that the writer scarcely ever had a more uneasy time, he has never been needed more. ↗

— James Baldwin

#writing #experience

A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can. ↗

— Edith Hamilton

#great #historical #knowledge #literature #people

When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.) ↗

— John Varley

#nasa #pens #tools #writing #design