QUOTES ABOUT WRITING    Children and Books    Creativity                          

"The two most beautiful words in the English language
are 'check enclosed.' ~ Dorothy Parker

“Longer words, 
especially with Latin roots, 
are round, stretchy, abstract, ornate, erudite.
They may help you when your mode
is critical or analytical.
but short words, especially strings of them,
will ground your prose,
make it feel real and true.”~ Roy Peter Clark

“Everywhere I go,
I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers.
My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
There's many a best seller
that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” 
~ Flannery O’Connor

“I am not afraid that the book will be controversial,
I'm afraid it will not be controversial.” ~ Flannery O’Connor

“I find that most people know what a story is
until they sit down to write one.” ~ Flannery O’Connor

"When a book leaves your hands,
it belongs to God.
He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others,
but I think that for the writer to worry
is to take over God's business.” ~ Flannery O’Connor

”You need not expect to get your book right the first time.
Go to work and revamp or rewrite it.
God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals,
and so they always command attention.
These are God's adjectives.
You thunder and lightning too much;
the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.” ~ Mark Twain

“To get the right word in the right place
is a rare achievement.
To condense the diffused light of a page of thought
Into the luminous flash of a single sentence,
is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...
Anybody can have ideas--
The difficulty
is to express them 
without squandering a quire of paper
on an idea
that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”~ Mark Twain

“I notice that you use plain, simple language,
short words and brief sentences.
That is the way to write English -
It is the modern way and the best way.
Stick to it;
Don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
When you catch an adjective, kill it.
No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them -
Then the rest will be valuable.
They weaken when they are close together.
They give strength when they are wide apart.
An adjective habit,
or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, 
once fastened upon a person,
is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” ~ Mark Twain

"Builds-A-Fire has a history of this kind of behavior," a man in a BIA suit said to the others.
"A storytelling fetish accompanied by an extreme need to tell the truth.
Dangerous." ~ “The Trial of Thomas Builds-A-Fire,” 
                           short story by Sherman Alexie.

"There must be belief in the bright side,
in goodness, happiness, and beauty--
as the real background, after all."  ~ Mary Louisa Molesworth

"I spent five years in solitary confinement writing Outside Over There. 
 I don't have a new idea."  ~ Maurice Sendak. 

"If you fail to plan;
you are planning to fail."  ~ Benjamin Franklin

Note:  Quotes are reproduced accurately, according to the best of Rinda's knowledge.

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