Jen > Jen's Quotes

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#1

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

tags: arbitrariness, beginning, creative-process, end, storytelling, writing

609 likes

#2

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

tags: books, creative-process, discovery, exploration, stories, writing

260 likes

#3

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

[Modernism's Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]”
― Robert Hughes

tags: art, artists, cezanne, confidence, creative-process, depression, depression-humor, doubt, fame, fame-and-fortune, great-art, great-artist, greatness, humility, insecurity, introspection, narcissism, paul-cezanne, self-awareness, self-delusion, self-doubt, self-doubts, self-esteem, self-esteem-or-lack-thereof

451 likes

#4

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]”
― Junot Diaz

tags: creative-process, urge, writers, writing

212 likes

#5

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”
― Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories

tags: creative-process, habit, inspiration, persistence, writing

556 likes

#6

“I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard other people say similar things - so it's one of the ways I know there's help and guidance out there. It's just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard.”
― Jim Henson

tags: creative-process, inspiration

134 likes

#7

“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

tags: commitment, creative-process, professionalism, writing

169 likes

#8

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

tags: creative-process, failure, motivational, persistence, writing

166 likes

#9

“The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

tags: creative-process

228 likes

#10

“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."

(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)”
― David McCullough

tags: clarity, creative-process, precision, thinking, thought, writing

275 likes

#11

“We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

tags: creative-process, masterpiece, pain

117 likes

#12

“Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions."

(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)”
― Anton Chekhov

tags: characters, creative-process, state-of-mind, writing

118 likes

#13

“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.

[Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction, New York Times, April 19, 1992]”
― Cormac McCarthy

tags: ability, author-quotes, creative-process, earning-a-living, gift, humor, inspirational-quotes, quotes, self-confidence, self-support, talent, writing, writing-life, writing-quotes

44 likes

#14

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can."

[Keynote Address, University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012)]”
― Neil Gaiman

tags: creative-process, identity, individuality, life, writing

43 likes

#15

“Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

[Interview, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009]”
― Cormac McCarthy

tags: authorship, creation, creative-process, driving-forces, hardship, pain, writing

47 likes

#16

“- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!?
- You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!”
― Esther and Jerry Hicks

tags: abraham, creative-process, loa, visualization

58 likes

#17

“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

[Letter to Joan Lancaster, 26 June 1956]”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

tags: adjectives, creative-process, description, show-dont-tell, writing

104 likes

#18

“The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.

(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

tags: creative-process, expectations, honesty, integrity, on-writing, pandering, self-expression, selling-out, writing

23 likes

#19

“I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author."

[As quoted in the author biography on Mankell's official website.]”
― Henning Mankell

tags: becoming-a-writer, creative-process, writers, writing

13 likes

#20

“You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.”
― Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

tags: awaken, awakened, awakening, create, creating, creative-process, creator, deity, destiny, divine, divine-being, divine-life, divine-living, divine-role, divine-self, divinity, divinity-within, higher-consciousness, higher-living, higher-self, infinite-possibilities, inner-beauty, inner-life, inner-peace, inner-power, inner-self, inner-strength, inner-voice, inner-wisdom, law-of-attraction, life-changing, life-philosophy, life-purpose, manifest-destiny, manifestation, manifesting, origins, power-of-thoughts, sacred, sacred-callings, sacred-spark, sacredness, self-awareness, self-empowerment, soul, soul-purpose, spiritual, spiritual-development, spiritual-growth, spiritual-life, spiritual-origins, spiritual-quotes, spirituality, wisdom-inspirational

367 likes

#21

“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better.”
― Walt Stanchfield

tags: creative-process, drawing, inspiration

75 likes

#22

“Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.”
― P.D. James, Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights

41 likes

#23

“Art is the overflow of emotion into action.”
― Brian Raif

tags: action, art, creative-expression, creative-process, creative-writing, creativity, emotion, writing, writing-process

25 likes

#24

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

273 likes

#25

“At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.”
― Benjamin J. Carey, Barefoot in November

tags: anger, art, authors, babies, birth, books, boredom, death, depression, disdain, disease, disgust, distance, dying, enjoyment, family, fondness, friendship, grieving, happiness, hate, illness, knowlege, literature, love, marriage, mourning, obsession, passion, reading, romance, sadness, thirst

87 likes

#26

“The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts.”
― Roopleen

183 likes

#27

“In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.”
― John Green

tags: authors, authorship, books, e-books, editors, publishing, value

27 likes

#28

“Writing romantic fiction is the second chance that loved ones denied us.”
― Shannon Alder

tags: authors, fiction, writers, writing

11 likes

#29

“Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.

Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.”
― Mary O'Hara, Een zoele zomer in Wyoming

tags: authors, stories, writers, writers-on-writing, writing

7 likes

#30

“An author’s strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher’s commitment to it.”
― Sterling Lord, Lord of Publishing: A Memoir

tags: authors, publishing

3 likes

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