Juliet > Juliet's Quotes

“I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“The desire to write grows with writing.”
― Erasmus

“I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”
― Stephen King, Bag of Bones

“Look, don't just stare at the pages," I used to tell my students. "Become the characters. Live inside the book.”
― Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed

“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”
― Walter Mosley

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”
― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.”
― China Miéville

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
― Jane Yolen

“Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”
― Mel Brooks

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair ... Come to it any way but lightly.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. ”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.”
― Diane Duane

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer.”
― Jean M. Auel

“Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Write to your heart’s content and by all means, have fun with your creation. It’s your moment to do absolutely anything within those pages.”
― Jennifer Murgia

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.”
― Francoise Sagan

“Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“Writing well means never having to say, "I guess you had to be there.”
― Jef Mallett

“The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.”
― Stephen Sondheim

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
― Cecil Day Lewis

“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light.”
― Jyrki Vainonen

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon