Lydia Plunk > Lydia's Quotes

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
― Anne Frank

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.”
― Philip José Farmer

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

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
― Michelangelo

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
― Michelangelo

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

“The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.”
― Michelangelo

“If I am more alive because love burns and chars me,
as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation,
it's that he who lays me low is my salvation,
and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.”
― Michelangelo