Quotes on editing, editors, writing, writers . . .

[NekoParks]

Here is a link to a George Plimpton's interview of Hemmingway concerning how he revises his works. It includes one of my favorite Hemmingway quotes about writing.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway

INTERVIEWER: How much rewriting do you do?
HEMINGWAY: It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
INTERVIEWER: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
HEMINGWAY: Getting the words right.

 

[NekoParks]

I love all of these quotes. Wonderful.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
E. L. Doctorow

 

[NekoParks]

"Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes." Thomas W. Higginson

I love the guerrilla writing and Nabokov quotes. I am definitely printing this thread.

 

[_Lynn_]

Here's two on language . . .


Language is fossil poetry. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836)


If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language. ~~ Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953)

 

[NekoParks]

Love the Belloc Quote

Here's two on language . . .


Language is fossil poetry. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836)


If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language. ~~ Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953)

“Be regular and ordinary in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

― Gustave Flaubert

 

[NekoParks]

Often Writers Overlook Daily Life as a Writing Source

"In writing ... remember that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together."

SUSAN GLASPELL, Little Masks

 

[NekoParks]

Remember that the most valuable component to a well told story is the writer....

David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers. If you haven't read him, you are missing a real treat.

"When I was teaching -- I taught for a while -- my students would write as if they were raised by wolves. Or raised on the streets. They were middle-class kids and they were ashamed of their background. They felt like unless they grew up in poverty, they had nothing to write about. Which was interesting because I had always thought that poor people were the ones who were ashamed. But it's not. It's middle-class people who are ashamed of their lives. And it doesn't really matter what your life was like, you can write about anything. It's just the writing of it that is the challenge. I felt sorry for these kids, that they thought that their whole past was absolutely worthless because it was less than remarkable."


DAVID SEDARIS, January Magazine, June 2000

 

[_Lynn_]

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.” ~~ Mark Twain

 

[_Lynn_]

“It has often been said
there’s so much to be read,
you never can cram
all those words in your head.

So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore
for the reader who reads.

That's why my belief is
the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh
of the reader's relief is.

And that's why your books
have such power and strength.
You publish with shorth!
(Shorth is better than length.)”

~~ Dr. Seuss

 

[_Lynn_]

I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter. ~ James Michener

 

[_Lynn_]

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know? ~~ Steve Wright

 

[sr71plt]

"The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer." -- Zadie Smith

 

[_Lynn_]

“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
― Emily Dickinson


“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

 

[_Lynn_]

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke


Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and considered one of the most significant poets in the German language.

 

[Bramblethorn]

"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture. Nota bene.

"It tells you.
"You don’t tell it."

- Joan Didion, "Why I Write": http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/16/why-i-write-joan-didion/

 

[Bramblethorn]

http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/182502_528493033829135_1572861255_n.jpg

"On this site on August 15th, 1968, authors JACK KEROUAC (1922-1968) and WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS (1914-1997) came to blows over a disagreement regarding the Oxford Comma... Burroughs corrected the spelling and grammar of the police report before passing out."

 

[_Lynn_]

Some on reading . . .

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.”
― Italo Calvino

 

[_Lynn_]

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

“Imagination is the highest form of research.”
― Albert Einstein

“There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing than while not writing...”
― Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer's Workshop

 

[sr71plt]

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

-- G. K. Chesterton

 

[_Lynn_]

“If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.”
― H.G. Wells

“It is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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

 

[KillerWithWords]

"I suppose some editors are failed writers; but so are most writers." - T. S. Eliot

Fantastic Quote!

 

[_Lynn_]

All words are pegs to hang ideas on. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887)

You can stroke people with words. ~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

Fine words dress ill deeds. ~~ George Herbert (1593 - 1633)



(I hope I'm not repeating quotes, but I didn't scroll through them all to check.)

 

[_Lynn_]

On imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." ~~ Albert Einstein (1930)

"He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet." ~~ Joseph Joubert (1877)

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." ~~ William Blake (1790-1793?)

"Imagination is a very high sort of seeing." ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844)

 

[_Lynn_]

“Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.”
― Stephen King

“Writing is the geometry of the soul. ”
― Plato

"I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

[sr71plt]

“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.”
― Stephen King

I see a lot of truth in this one.