Writers often give advice they don’t follow to the letter themselves.
– Tobias Wolff
Category: Quotable
Quotable 263
Don’t overwrite. Avoid the redundant phrases, the distracting adjectives, the unnecessary adverbs. Beginners, especially, seem to think that writing fiction needs a special kind of flowery prose, completely unlike any sort of language one might encounter in day-to-day life. This is a misapprehension about how the effects of fiction are produced.
– Sarah Waters
Quotable 262
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
– Richard Bach
Quotable 261
One of the surest ways to establish dramatic tension is to have characters in bad situations who are trying intelligently to solve their problems, failing, and falling into worse situations.
– Cory Doctorow
Quotable 260
The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.
– John Hughes
Quotable 259
Sometimes I think works of fiction should be unsatisfying. Because a story is not a sandwich. Some stories should leave you hungry.
– Charlie Jane Anders
Quotable 258
Write first. The confidence comes through the process.
– Cathy Presland
Quotable 257
Fiction can sometimes tell the truth better than facts.
– Tony Hillerman
Quotable 256
The less conscious one is of being “a writer,” the better the writing.
– Pico Iyer
Quotable 255
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
– Samuel Johnson