Thursday, May 22, 2008

Writing Quotes of the Day

"Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values."
Willa Cather

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart..."
William Wordsworth

"You must find some way to elevate your act of writing...Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of methods will do the job: humor, anecdote, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words."
William Zinsser

"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living."
Alexander Pope

"In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself; to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."
Alfred Kazin

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"
Edna Ferber

"There’s a lot of tasteful writing out there – nice, tidy, clean – but sometimes it’s excess, rawness and the unpolished that work."
J W Goethe

"An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate."
Dan Vyleta

No comments: