Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.
– Roger Ebert
Tag: Quotable
Quotable 483
The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
– William Zinsser
Quotable 482
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
– James Fenton
Quotable 481
It doesn’t matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.
– David Chase
Quotable 480
Creativity is like any other human talent – it takes an enormous amount of effort to develop.
– Jonah Lehrer
Quotable 479
Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.
– Stephen King
Quotable 478
Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story … humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing … and as unobtrusive.
– Ray Bradbury
Quotable 477
Just as “no man is a hero to his valet,” no writer is a hero to his or her proofreader.
– Ben Schott
Quotable 476
I think one must trust the writing process. Understand that creativity requires nonlinearity and unique associative combinations. Creative people do a lot of trial and error and rarely know where they are going exactly until they get there.
– Scott Barry Kaufman
Quotable 475
[Writers block] isn’t a physical thing – it isn’t a gorilla with a croquet mallet who smashes your hand every time you reach for the keyboard. You can get past it. You think past it. You write past it.
– Chuck Wendig