David Rice > David's Quotes

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
― George R.R. Martin

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Diaz

“Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.”
― Lili St. Crow

“Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.”
― Red Haircrow

“When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Ink, a Drug.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“...writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

“Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.”
― A. Lee Martinez

“I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

“Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?

Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.”
― Ernest Hemingway, On Writing

“I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to
become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your
parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can
do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite
hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've
been to college.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.”
― Amy Joy

“Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.”
― Arthur Freed

“Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.”
― Steven Brust

“All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.”
― Stephanie Lennox

“A writer fails, not when a reader is not moved; but when, as a reader, the writer is not moved.”
― Gerard de Marigny, Signs of War

“Sapient or Savage (The Sonnet)

To be or not to be,
That is not the question.
To be human or stay animal,
That is the question.
Human and animal,
What is the difference!
To be animal is to be selfish,
To be human is to go beyond the self.
There's more to life than us and them,
There's more to life than loss and gain.
There's more to life than money and fame,
There's more to life than dogmatic lanes.
To be or not to be, that is not the question.
Be sapient or stay savage, it's your decision.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability