Craft Quotes

Craft Quote of the day

If it's flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, be the best hamburger flipper in the world. Whatever it is you do you have to master your craft.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.

Verbose is not a synonym for literary.

I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.

That's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.

It's the writing that teaches you.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.

What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

Storytellers don't show, they tell. I'm sticking with that.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.