Writing Quotes

The best artists know what to leave out

Thursday, June 24th, 2010
wing feathers

They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren’t necessary. They suggest, and let their viewer fill in whatever else is needed to make the communication complete. They aren’t afraid…

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Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.

Monday, June 21st, 2010
baby spiders

Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears… There is a difference between writing for children and for adults. I am lucky, though, as I seldom seem to have my audience in mind…

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I don’t suffer Writer’s Block… I don’t wait on the muse, I summon it at need

Sunday, June 6th, 2010
lasso

If I had to name the QuoteSnack muses, they’d be Curiosity and her cousin Stubborn. I Know I am going to look until I find, even when I don’t feel like it. I have faith that this discipline is good for me, and I believe I…

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The best lay in town is a poem

Monday, May 31st, 2010
psychadelic flower

I hear I am one of the most successful living poets in the world these days. And if someone asked me, “How in the hell did that ever happen?” I could respond, “Well, I worked my butt off, and I have been lucky at poker, and…”

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There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
books

“I just know it’s what I want to do,” she said, “but…”

Her voice trailed off, and for a time they walked in silence. The tang of the sea was in the air. The Otherworld stars wheeled and spun in constellations unfamiliar to Cat’s…

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Creating art and creating ourselves are the same act

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
magnetic words

We are entering a very singular world together. The world of public discourse – political, social, diplomatic, commercial – has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of…

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Writer’s block is simply a failure of ego

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
speeding lights

The literal details of writing involve one’s own physiology and metabolism. You begin from a standing start and have to accelerate yourself to the point of cerebration where the words are coming – well, and in order. All…

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Books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately

Monday, May 3rd, 2010
books forever

I took down one of them at random. It stood at the very end of the shelf, was called LIFE’S ADVENTURE, or some such title, by Mary Carmichael, and was published in this very month of October. It seems to be her first book, I said to myself, but one must…

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Share Your Creativity Day

Monday, April 26th, 2010

I’m trying something new!
You’re invited to post your own poetry or bits of stories, drop links to favorite literature-related sites, tell us about a recent writing-related experience or some other creative writing goodness. Have a poem in a poetry journal? Drop a link. Have a friend who does gorgeous work? Tell us [...]

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No one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry

Friday, April 23rd, 2010
jellyfish reflection

Here I am at three in the morning, three hours after Earth Day, unable to sleep, unwilling to let the sun come up without having excerpted Rachel Carson.

Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring (1962). In 1958 a friend wrote to her for…

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When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less

Friday, April 16th, 2010
Everybody's a critic

One ownership does not cancel out the other. Alice subtracted one from 365, demonstrating that there are indeed 364 un-birthdays in a year – and of course Humpty Dumpty had to check her work. Humpty Dumpty…

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It is the duty of a writer to devote his energy to the search for truth

Saturday, April 10th, 2010
notes

In the love of truth which leads to a knowledge of it lies not only the hope of humanity but its safety. Deep down we feel that, as every human being has a right to air and water, so he has a right to food, clothing, light, heat, work, education, love…

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