Barbara Tarn > Barbara's Quotes

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. ”
― Raymond Chandler

“Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.”
― Raymond Chandler

“Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.”
― Raymond Chandler

“The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.”
― Raymond Chandler

“The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.”
― Raymond Chandler

“Se vuoi salvarti, leggi. E se tu volessi, addirittura, salvare qualcuno, scrivi.”
― Leo Ortolani

“But to yell at your creativity, saying, “You must earn money for me!” is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.”
― P.D. James, Innocent Blood

“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

“Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.”
― P.D. James

“It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.”
― P.D. James

“I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

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

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. ”
― Joss Whedon

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”
― Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

“Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.”
― Daphne du Maurier