c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I thought that one was going to hit me,” I said, watching the disappointed girl stalk off into the crowd. “Being your girlfriend is dangerous.” “What can I say? I’m a magnificent specimen of manhood. Of course they all want me. But I do appreciate you protecting my honor.
— Kylie Scott, Play
It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup.
— Tennessee Williams
The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
The boy planted his hands on his hips and a broad smile lit his face. "My name's Peter. Can I play too?
— Brom, The Child Thief
Against inebriation – and for drunkenness! Burn down the liquor stores, and replace them with playgrounds!
— CrimethInc., Anarchy and Alcohol
He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
— James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once.
— Euripides, Medea
There is work that is work and there is play that is play
—  there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.
I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
— William Congreve
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
— E.B. White
Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theatre, standing there in the dark, when all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug at my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy look!" I said, "Yeah, goosebumps. You definitely got goosebumps. You like the play that much?" They said it wasn't the play that gave 'em goosebumps, it was the audience!I'd forgot to tell them to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of people sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying at the same things...well that just knocked 'em out! They said, "Trudy, the play was soup, the audience, art."So they're taking goosbumps back with 'em into space. Goosebumps! Quite a souvenir. I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe, one day we'll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps.
— Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Or was he saying, "Hi! Wanna play?"And I did. Of course I did.
— Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
...That is my biography from the first day of my chess life to the present.JOURNALIST. And your plans.PLAYER. To play!
— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
At an age when most children love to play with toys, he played with weapons.
— Nawab Shafath Ali Khan
Did I live? The human world is like a vast musical instrument on which we play our individual part while simultaneously listening to the compositions of others in an effort to contribute to the whole. We don't chose whether to engage, only how to; we either harmonize or create dissonance. Our words, our deeds, our very presence create and leave impressions in the minds of others just as a writer makes impressions with their words. Who you are is an unfolding narrative. You came from nothing and will return there eventually. Instead of taking ourselves so seriously all the time, we can discover the playful irony of a story that has never been told in quite this way before. -- Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs
— Stephen Batchelor
Through play, children experience a greater confidence in their bodies, surroundings and themselves. They become familiar with what they can and cannot do.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, Play The Danish Way: A Guide to Raising Balanced, Resilient and Healthy Children through Play
Toys can be anything
—  children can play all morning with a stone and a plastic bucket. It is about how imaginative conductive and how many applicative possibilities toys offer.
As always we could talk... over and over... here I am locked in time, so far I have plenty of it.
— Deyth Banger, The Life Of One Kid
Memories come back... the whole beginng comes out with a new end.
— Deyth Banger, Notes Of A Dead Man Sequel
You play on the ice... you get what you should get.
— Deyth Banger
When one's craft is rooted in strong relationship, he or she lures the into becoming a part of the show.
— Val Uchendu
By manipulating the physical configuration of [any situation], you make it produce a subset of the infinite pattern of [possibilities]. And even if you don't know how to play [above situation], you can still play with it.
— Ian Bogost, Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games
To be poetic is how u get somebody as a girl around you..."Dexter: You seem uncertain. It's uncomfortable, isn't it? Just when you think you've answered all the questions, another one smacks you in the face. Life, life, life. Life is just like that. Which is why I prefer death."But in the end some people play well their role others can't play it.
— Deyth Banger
That one has to be playing in order to be playing a game seems equally implausible. When professional athletes are performing in assigned games for wages, although they are certainly playing games, we are not at all inclined to conclude from that fact that they are without qualification playing. For we think of professional athletes as working when they play their games and as playing when they go home from work to romp with their children.
— Bernard Suits
Cascando"why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you
— Samuel Beckett
...So to be fast to don't be long and to try to be short... If you want to play the best game, create it - make the rules, make what they will do... That's how I do it. I make people to play my games and then often loooose!
— Deyth Banger
A creative invitation is a combination of materials and context that intrigue children with a suggestion of play.
— Rachelle Doorley, Tinkerlab: A Hands-On Guide for Little Inventors
Mama: But something might happen. Something that might change everything. Who knows what it might be, but it might be worth waiting for! (Jessie doesn't respond.) Try if for two more weeks.Jessie: No, MamaMama: i'll pay more attention to you. Tell the truth when you ask me. Let you have your say.Jessie: No, Mama. This is how I have my say. This is how I say what I thought about it ALL and I say No. To Dawson and Loretta and the Red Chinese and epilepsy and Ricky and Cicel and you. And me. And hope. I say No.,
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Mama:...you can keep trying. You can get brave and try some more. You don't have to give up.Jessie: I'm NOT giving up. This IS the other thing I'm trying. And I'm sure there are some other things that might work, but MIGHT work isn't good enough any more. I need something that WILL work. THIS will work. That's why I picked it.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Play invites participation.
— Brian Goodwin
After graduating early from high school, I carefully listened to the quarterback during my first play in college spring ball. My mind was on the very basics of football: alignment, assignment, and where to stand in the huddle. The quarterback broke the huddle and I ran to the line, meeting the confident eyes of a defensive end—6-foot-6, 260- pound Matt Shaughnessy.I was seventeen, a true freshman, and he was a 23-year-old fifth-year senior, a third-round draft pick. Huge difference between the two of us. Impressing the coach was not on my mind. Survival was. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I wasn’t cursing. I was praying for help.Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray ( James 5:13).That day Matt came off the ball so fast. Bam! Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, thrown to the ground. I got up and limped back to the huddle.Four years later...standing on the sidelines in my first NFL game, bouncing on my toes, waiting for my chance to go in, one of the tight ends went down. My time to shine! Where do I stand? Who do I have? I look up and meet the same eyes I met on my first play in college football.Matt Shaughnessy! ...
— Jake Byrne, First and Goal: What Football Taught Me About Never Giving Up
You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked.“I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.”“I thought I was the only one who could afford to.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
How can I get up everyday knowing you had to kill yourself to make it stop hurting and I was here all the time and I never even saw it. And then you gave me this chance to make it better, convince you to stay alive and I couldn't do it. How can I live with myself after this, Jessie?
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Give up trying to convince people who you are, instead confuse them. It is a lot more fun!
— Shannon L. Alder
The beach is a natural park, without the greenery but the sand is a natural toy.
— Anuradha Bhattacharyya
We can play, hide and seek if you want, you will hide and i will love you
— Georgia Kakalopoulou
I don't ever react to a situation. My preference is to reflect upon the circumstances & act as if I were a baby who is in possession of a new toy to play with.
— Yogesh Datta D.
First sons and daughters seduced to play and party 'til it was too late to realize they were being lead to the slaughter. They discounted the law of moderation.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The goal is not simply to 'work hard, play hard.' The goal is to make our work and our play indistinguishable.
— Simon Sinek
In life, we are all playing the game of thrones one way or the other
— Ikechukwu Izuakor
Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of culture by allowing the innate human need of rhythm, harmony, change, alternation, contrast and climax, etc., to unfold in full richness.
— Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture
For us the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generally it is a simple circle, dyutamandalam, drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance. It is drawn with great care, all sorts of precautions being taken against cheating. The players are not allowed to leave the ring until they have discharged their obligations. But, sometimes a special hall is provisionally erected for the game, and this hall is holy ground. The Mahabharata devotes a whole chapter to the erection of the dicing hall - sabha - where the Pandavas are to meet their prtners. Games, of chance, therefore, have their serious side. They are included in ritual.
— Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture
Oh, Narcissus! My heart beats ink for you.A pulse in every line.It's your eyesmy words want to be read by,your kind of mindthey would be understood by,your heartthey'd be felt by,and then you'd feel the same way that I do,if only these words could be read or heard by you.
— Steven L. Sheppard, The Untold Story Of Narcissus And Echo
Play with your ideals and laugh at the limitations of your mundane life.
— Miranda J. Barrett
Gosh, even Roark noticed Dominique.
— Steven L. Sheppard, Unrequited Waves
To paraphrase the famous Walt saying, Cast Members are there to work so Guests can play.
— Leslie Le Mon, The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014 - Disneyland: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Place on Earth
He's at war with himself. Why doesn't he surrender to his feelings and stop fighting himself? He has hang-ups that I must cut him loose from.
— Steven L. Sheppard, Byblis And Caunus
You really are exotic, for boys in my country, they do not have such pectorals. I like yours.
— Steven L. Sheppard, The Untold Story Of Iphis And Ianthe
I think I know what he is REALLY doing in there... and thinking about ME while doing it." (continuing) "But when he thinks of me, he thinks: sister! Think: Byblis! BYBLIS! I don't think of him as my brother, I think of him as CAUNUS!
— Steven L. Sheppard, Byblis And Caunus
CURTAIN CALLThe world is our stage and the final act can highlight or ruin a beautiful play
— Kamil Ali, Profound Vers-A-Tales
Nice enough?” he asked, tendons tightening in his neck like he intended to Hulk out on me. “Did you just call my kiss ‘nice enough’?
— Kylie Scott, Play
Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.
— Plato
If I am a pawn in someone else's chess game, you better believe I am going to demand an explanation before being shoved at some rook. I'll play my part, damn it, but I want the courtesy of being asked for my consent!
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
For us the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generatly it is a simple circle, dyutamandalam, drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance. It is drawn with great care, all sorts of precautions being taken against cheating. The players are not allowed to leave the ring until they have discharged their obligations. But, sometimes a special hall is provisionally erected for the game, and this hall is holy ground. The Mahabharata devotes a whole chapter to the erection of the dicing hall - sabha - where the Pandavas are to meet their prtners. Games, of chance, therefore, have their serious side. They are included in ritual.
— Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture
And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
I hate when people play politics with me
—  when I have never tried to play politics with anyone. I always try to play fair with everyone. But
Aleksar Greene was a boy I used to play with, he was my imaginary friend.
— Shawn Lukas
Aleksar Greene was a boy I used to play with. He was my imaginary friend.
— Shawn Lukas
It's human
—  we all put self interest first.
Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.
— Euripides, Medea
Old loves are dropped when new ones come
— Euripides, Medea
Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.
— Euripides, Medea
Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll.
— Euripides, Medea
In childbirth grief begins.
— Euripides, Medea
...for nothing is more boring than being forced to play.
— Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
Better a humble heart, a lowly life. Untouched by greatness let me live - and live. Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.
— Euripides, Medea
To amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
You'll like it less when you hear what they've been building. It's a big raised platform at the end of the square about two metres above the ground, with steps running up to it.''Like a stage?' Erak suggested. 'Maybe they're going to put on a play.''Or an execution,' Horace said.
— John Flanagan, Erak's Ransom
I hate parties.And a wedding is the biggest party of all.All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower.He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them.Then I have to greet them.A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.
— Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.
— Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
Our play is not something separate from our spirituality
—  it is itself a sign of the presence of God in the world.
If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.
— Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
hornier than a bunny on ecstasy
— Kyle Adams, Dirty Play
People used to play with toys.Now the toys play with them.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Play hard. Play, play, play like your life depends on it. Because it does.
— Dean Koontz
c.	“So, hunny, don’t waste your time trying to label or define me…’cause I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.
— George C. Wolfe, The Colored Museum
Finish the work, otherwise an unfinished work will finish you.
— Amit Kalantri
Behind an able Indian Cricket Team there is always able Sachin Tendulkar.
— Amit Kalantri, 5 Feet 5 Inch Run Machine – Sachin Tendulkar
If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either
— James M. Cain
While I'm writing, I'm far away;and when I come back, I've gone.
— Pablo Neruda
Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.
— Bernard Cornwell
The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul.
— Miranda July
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Works of Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays
I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.
— Nora Roberts
Don’t write what you know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words.
— Valerie Sherwood
One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick—then it’s personal. The bad guy isn’t just the “bad guy” anymore, he’s the BAD GUY!
— Michael J. Sullivan
Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.
— Jennifer Crusie
So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.
— Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary
If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention.
— Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
You are always naked when you start writing
—  you are always as if you had never written anything before
Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.
— Stephen King, Bag of Bones
Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.
— T.L. Crain
What I don't write is as important as what I write.
— Jamaica Kincaid, Generations of Women: In Their Own Words
There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
— Stephen E. Ambrose
Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.
— Robert B. Parker
I’ve come to the end of another book alive. At times like this I’m always at a loss for words.
— Joe Coomer, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water
Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.
— Flannery O'Connor
I never really feel that I’m stuck. I actually think that people are never stuck, there’s no such thing as writers block, I think that theres terror that can silence you. But if you can think of it as a dynamic thing I mean a writers block, it’s a paralysis an immobility and the thing that has immobilized you is a very powerful force. Immobility is itself an act, it’s a choice. It can sometimes take as much energy to remain immobile as it does to be mobile. And if you think of it in a dynamic way then it’d freeze you from the sense that at some point your talent will simply abandon you and you’re just a vacant shell with nothing to say, I don’t think that ever really happens. But I think that terror, bad experience, trauma and so on can absolutely silence you.
— Tony Kushner
There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe.
— Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy.
— Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir
Begin your writing, fiction or article, where the action begins. This action can be internal (e.g., an important insight or personal decision) or external (e.g., a murder or calamity). Begin too early, you lose your reader. Begin too late, you lose your story.
— Walt Shiel
Good fiction makes the truth believable.
— Tarrant Smith
Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil. J.Paul Getty
— Alison  Wong
A successful story always offers its audience more than a simple resolution of events. A story offers a dramatic affirmation of human needs that are acted out to resolution and fulfillment. Even when that resolution and fulfillment are dark, the journey can still be vivid, potent and illuminating.
— Bill  Johnson
My rule is never save bits. They get the way, and you don't think of anything new. Put 'em in. Make a big mess.
— Gene Wolfe
Write what is important to you, regardless of fashion or marketability or anything like that – all those things are so far out of your control that you may as well not think about them. Of course, this may mean you’ll never be published but that’s a risk we all take every single time we set hands to keyboard or pen to paper. For me, if I can sit back at the end of a project and say, ‘yes, I stayed honest, I said what I wanted to say, and I made it sing to the best of my ability’, then I’m happy enough. Of course, if anyone wants to buy the damned thing off me when I’m done, that’s jam I won’t refuse.
— Celine Kiernan
To my mind, the most important thing in any form of fiction is the human element, but only if it takes us beyond the everyday, into situations that examine the complexities that may fascinate or puzzle us. To dwell on the mundane as some kind of a writing exeercise is useless.
— Graham Worthington, Zorn: A Legend of the Days to Come
The paradox of writing is that you’re trying to use words to express what words can’t express.
— Stephen Fischer
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
— William Hazlitt, Essays
You could say, in a way, that I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps I might be called a recorder? ... I just happen to be one of those holding the pen, that's all.
— Etienne de L'Amour, The Lucian Uprising
When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.
— Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak!
You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.
— Linus Pauling
It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.
— Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees
I just write whenever I can.
— Elmer Kelton
Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.
— Thomas Harris
There will be pages. Lots and lots of pages. Most of the pages will have letters on them, and a vast majority of these letters will be in the Roman alphabet.
— Aaron Allston
God, Himself, wrote the 10 into stone with his own finger. He told the epic of mankind, our origins and our future, in a book. For me, there is no more noble a cause and no more honorable a vocation than to say, like Him, I am a writer.
— Gerard de Marigny, Signs of War
Chapter one is where you reach out your hand to the reader and say, "Come, let's have an adventure together.
— Tenaya Jayne
I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
— George Bernard Shaw
The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words-- not seeing the words for the prose. Being adults, they had forgotten what every child understands, which is giving and taking a meaning is not automatic and inevitable
— Jacques Barzun, Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers
This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.
— Patricia MacLachlan, Word After Word After Word
Sometimes you have to tell a a bunch of lies to get at the truth.
— Stella Atrium
Travel became distinguishable from pain and began to be regarded as an intellectual pleasur...These factors--the voluntariness of departure, the freedom implicit in the indeterminancies of mobility, the pleasure of travel free from necessity, the notion that travel signifies autonomy and is a means for demonstrating what one 'really' is independent of one context or set of defining associations--remain the characteristics of the modern conception of travel.Eric Leed
— Robin Jarvis, Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel
Bringing you closer to the fragile edge of living is the job of a writer.
— Julie Rodelli
I have this idea that writing is all about divergent thinking colliding with a hurricane of emotions.
— R. Y.S. Perez, I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection
Movies and television may be influencing writers to write more visually, using immediate scenes with specific points of view to put their stories across. But fiction can always accomplish something that visual media will never be able to match....One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts: interior monologue.
— Renni Browne, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print
At the day's end, a writer lives alone with her story, wrestling with characters and settings, and the way light filters into and out of a scene. The deeper messages often escape her.Sometimes I take for granted the journey through the telling. At other times I curse the muse's power. But through it all, I live each day in deep gratitude.
— Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn
Rejection sucks. It sucks every time, whether it's a big suck or a little suck. But it's part of the process. It's part of being a writer. It's a badge that says 'I'm serious about this, and I'm sending out my work.
— Allison K. Williams, Get Published in Literary Magazines: The Indispensable Guide to Preparing, Submitting and Writing Better
All great movies have one thing in common: every frame of every scene could stand alone as a work of art. Why should it be different in a book?
— Sean Hinn
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
— Annie Dillard, The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New
An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius
— Arturo Pérez-Reverte
The best lie is the one that has an element of truth, so it’s good to include something real in your fiction.
— Renee Conoulty
Don’t polish it forever, put it out there. At some point the changes aren’t improvements, they’re just changes.
— Dan Alatorre
Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.
— Dan Alatorre
We slip into a dream, forgetting the room we're sitting in, forgetting it's lunchtime or time to go to work. We recreate, with minor and for the most part unimportant changes, the vivid and continuous dream the writer worked out in his mind (revising and revising until he got it right) and captured in language so that other human beings, whenever they feel like it, may open his book and dream that dream again.
— John Gardner
On working with other writers: You develop honesty and you can then ask the really embarrassing questions. I have learned so many things I didn’t want to know, and they were all a result of interesting interviews for background information.
— Dan Alatorre
My characters still talk the way normal people talk. They argue, they are sarcastic with each other, they joke around. I usually end up with one outrageous minor character in each book that people just rave about. We all have that one friend who says and does things that are a riot. A character like that is the salt in the soup: you want just enough to bring everything to life.
— Dan Alatorre
Inspiration is the crèche of your brainchildren. If you don’t feed them, they will die, and never come back. So someone please think about the children!
— Kevin Focke
People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.
— Dan Alatorre
Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar.
— Dan Alatorre
Technical knowledge, divorced from what it is supposed to be knowledge of, yields only the illusion of understanding. It's like being able to reel off the locations in a baseball field -- first base, second base, third base, home plate, left field, right field, center field, pitcher's mound -- without having the slightest clue as to how they function in a game. You can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk.
— Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
The art of writing is the manipulation of words to ease the mind and free the imagination
— Danielle M. Maistry
The invisibility factor of women in this industry is not unlike the invisibility of girl geeks. We know we exist, but everyone else seems to think we’re an enigma every time they get the notion to write about us and what we apparently want. What we want isn’t any different than what anyone wants. Good stories. With characters we can relate to or identify with or that are interesting to read about. And we’d like to feel welcome, not the perpetual other. We don’t want to feel excluded or like props in every narrative. We don’t want or need every story to be about a girl character. But we’d like them to be treated with the same care and attention male characters are. And it is possible, even in male dominated narratives.
— Mariah Huehner, Whedonistas!: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them
I'm my characters' galley slave.
— Chloe Thurlow, The Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomena
the focus one finds in the grammar books is on the wrong forms, on forms detached from the underlying (or overarching) form that must be in place before any technical terms can be meaningful or alive
— Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Most people say, “Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.
— Colson Whitehead
For the writer, the process of writing a novel is like getting an advanced copy of a book you'd really like to read.
— Brett Armstrong
A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.
— Maria Reeves
There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread.
— Noah Lukeman, A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation
Voice is really about letting your characters loose.
— C.S. Lakin, Writing the Heart of Your Story
The creative writer is compulsively concrete . . . . His fictional house should be haunted by ideas, not inhabited by them; they should flit past the windows after dark, not fill the rooms. The moment anyone tries to make poems or stories of ideas alone he is at the edge of absurdity; he can only harangue, never interest and persuade, because ideas in their conceptual state are simply not dramatic. They have to be put into the form of people and actions . . .
— Wallace Stegner, On Teaching and Writing Fiction
In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking.
— George Hillocks Jr.
Thousands of years ago, there were no writers; just storytellers. I would love to be a storyteller but I am just a writer. I don’t appeal to the ears; I appeal to the mind.
— King Samuel Benson
One of the key secrets of great writing is knowing where to start and when to stop.
— Chloe Thurlow, The Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomena
How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.
— Terry Pratchett, Snuff
Bye-bye. Nice knowing you. But if you are waiting for that perfect idea to strike like lightning during a dust storm (I live in New Mexico), you could be waiting a long time. Ideas are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I can’t walk to the bathroom without being hit with another idea. It’s what you DO with that idea that matters. Here is your mantra: BICHOK, BICHOK, BICHOKTranslation: Butt in chair, hands on keys. Just write. Every stinking day.
— Darynda Jones
Verbose is not a synonym for literary.
— Constance Hale, Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose
The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds.
— William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
When will someone write from the point of view of a joke, that is to say theway God sees events from above?
— Gustave Flaubert
No writing is effortless. I’m not saying you can’t have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I’m not saying a character hasn’t somehow gone in a different direction that I wanted her to go, but that was me, not her. I let her get away from me. I let her roam free and nine times out of ten, the result is not good. I have to go back and start over because she veered off the path of my book. She changed the vision. And I did that. Not her.
— Darynda Jones
From school desks with inkwells and scratchy nibs on paper to sweaty finger prints on a tablet... technology progression yes... style?
— David H. Millar
When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.
— Christopher Morley
Any thing is interesting if you can communicate it. There are no unimportant subjects for the enlivened mind.
— Kris Saknussemm
The best ending ever, for a science fiction book - or any novel, now that I think about it - was in Rendezvous With Rama. You know that you're at the end of the book and yet, there is no resolution. Then he hits you with those last six words. Better yet, the power is in the very last word. Wow!
— John Gaver
The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination. To extend the boundaries of the mysterious. To push into the unknown in pursuit of still other unknowns. To reach into one's heart, down into that place where the stories are, bringing up the mystery of oneself.
— Tim O'Brien
Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase.
— Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling
...what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.
— Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
Screenplays are structure, and that’s all they are. The quality of writing—which is crucial in almost every other form of literature—is not what makes a screenplay work. Structure isn’t anything else but telling the story, starting as late as possible, starting each scene as late as possible. You don’t want to begin with “Once upon a time,” because the audience gets antsy.
— William Goldman
She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.
— John Irving, A Widow for One Year
T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
— Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
— Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
An idea for a story can be anything. The sky is not the limit, the limit is beyond it.
— Chrys Fey
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
— Zan Marie Steadham
Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it's beautiful?...Simplify, simplify.
— William Zinsser
Doing it all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where we stand on the rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore—does that ruin the romance?
— Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life
What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited
— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader
It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing
— Sol Stein
What makes a writer successful is not money or fame (though both are nice) ... it's that in being true to her or himself, the words were able to connect to a reader's heart.
— Miyoko Hikiji
Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing.
— Alden Bell, Exit Kingdom
Contrary to popular belief, people always say "It was a pleasure doing business with you". It is the only thing that has stayed with me after an assignment. Always mix business with pleasure. That is a secret they don't want you to know. BUT never mix pleasure with business. Then you might just end up in a divorce.
— Nikhil Sharda
Doubt is the only reliable source of creativity.
— Peter Tieryas, Watering Heaven
Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and . . . read.But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you’ve become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
A blank page is no empty space. It is brimming with potential... It is a masterpiece in waiting -- yours.
— A.A. Patawaran, Write Here Write Now: Standing at Attention Before My Imaginary Style Dictator
All writers pen sad stories to garner sympathy, writing is after all for the abandoned of the society: the ink-leech, spewing black blood and sucking innocent souls.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
— Margaret Atwood
I don’t just want a gripping story line. I shoot for the three dimensional literary Braille to a silent Scorsese movie
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
... yes I speak a different language - the dark fire of poetry - it flutters and gutters in tune with the mood...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
If grammar is the skeleton of expression and usage the flesh and blood, then style is the personality.
— Arthur Plotnik, Elements of Expression
My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vivdness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie....
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
...at seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Inspiration can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be quite fickle ... If you want to be able to call on inspiration reliably then you need to work on it with regularity. Someone once said that if you only go out with a bucket to collect water when it's raining, sometimes you'll get water. But if you go out with your bucket every day, even when it's not raining, sometimes you'll catch unexpected rain. And also, a strange thing may happen: that the very act of going out with your bucket may actually provoke such rain.
— Etienne de L'Amour, Time and Time Again