Stories To Write Quotes & Sayings

You have to want to write and like to write. Sit down at that desk or machine or laptop and tell stories. — Linda Fairstein

As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!" — Ellen Glasgow

I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics. — Gene Luen Yang

I knew what I wanted to do when I set out. I knew that I wanted to write a book that told the story, obviously. I wanted it be comedy first, because I felt like there already had been childhood druggy stories that were very serious, and I felt that the unique thing here was that I was a comic and I could tell the story with some levity, and I have been laughing at these stories my whole life. — Moshe Kasher

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary. — Ken Follett

I was so in love with books from as early as I remember that it seemed a natural step to want to create them. And so I just wanted to be a writer from a very young age. And I think that the lies were just a natural side effect of me wanting to tell stories and write them down. — Marie Rutkoski

When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?' — Nicolas Roeg

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up. — Jason Schwartzman

Even today I keep a Dream Journal. It's whatever's going on in my subconscious, or things from dreams or even interesting items that pop into my head. I have thousands of pages of notes which I hope someday will turn into stories, or movies ... Being on the road gives me breathing time and the opportunity to think about what to do next. In fact right before I came down for lunch today, I was writing down notes about my feelings. Things that I need to do to keep motivated. I need to be motivated if I am to going to devote fifteen months to writing another book. And I couldn't write a book just because it's a commercial idea. I need to have a compelling reason. — Clive Barker

Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself. — Gail Carson Levine

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally. — Gary Gygax

I did worry at one stage that all my stories seem to revolve around secrets, lies and self-deception, but then I realized that most of human life revolves around those things too, so obviously they were going to feature hugely in anything I wrote. I write about people, so my novels are going to be as different as people are, but with the same core desires, hopes and fears that we all share. — Jane Lovering

I started writing stories when I was six years old. I was a very shy kid, extremely shy, and I had a fabulous first-grade teacher who told me to write. — Doreen Cronin

I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes. — Anne Rice

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards. — Antony Beevor

As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note." — Richard Conniff

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do. — Frank Deford

[ ... ]i'm not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have [ ... ] I'm trying to say I've invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that's fantastic. But if not, isn't this a cool monster? — China Mieville

Encourage children to write their own stories, and then don't rain on their parade. Don't say, 'That's not true.' Applaud flights of fantasy. Help with spelling and grammar, but stand up and cheer the use of imagination. — Gail Carson Levine

I started writing about New York as soon as I arrived. I was 19. I used to write short stories and send them out. — Candace Bushnell

Any topical subject, if it's Hollywood, will be a couple of years later because you've got to write it, produce it and distribute it, so automatically you're never going to be right on the cutting edge of stories. — George Clooney

In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times. — David A. Adler

I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an image, or a situation that sounds compelling - and then you just feel your way around until you find the edges of your story. It's like going into a dark room ... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch. — Dan Chaon

You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free. — Jodi Picoult

Usually, I have a lot of acquaintance with the story before I start writing it. When I didn't have regular time to give to writing, stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them. Now, I do that work by filling notebooks. — Alice Munro

A story to me must have some surprise ... I must have a passion to write the story. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

I wasn't perfect, and I made mistakes; but I learned from them and became a better person for it. I always followed my heart. And most of all, I loved - with every ounce of my being. I guess you could say the greatest love story ever written isn't confined to the pages of a book. It's in our lives; and we're the ones who write it. So that's what life's all about, isn't it? Why we're here. It has nothing to do with dollars. In fact, it's totally free. Life's greatest gift. And the best part is, the best part, this gift we give to others ... we get it back. It's what makes the journey so worthwhile ... it's LOVE. — Sebastian Cole

Hen, there's such a temptation to just constantly write things that are going to make the fans happy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of unhappiness to make those happy pay-offs work better. That's something that is fascinating to us and I think has really changed the way that stories are told. — Jeff Pinkner

With American Morons, Glen Hirshberg confidently shoulders his way through the generational pack to claim his rightful place on the summit. These stories are smart, challenging, ripe with feeling, expansive in every way: Horror as it should be writ, and as only the best and most expressive can write it. — Peter Straub

I read all of the stories that people write about me. The ones that are really interesting are the ones where they actually write their take on me as opposed to just printing what I said, because they're asking similar questions so often, sometimes it just sounds like I'm answering the questions different intentionally. — Curtis Jackson

But anyone can write, right?'" Conner asked. "I mean, that's why authors get judged so harshly, isn't it? Because technically everyone could do it if they wanted to."
"Just because anyone can do something doesn't mean everyone should," Mrs. Peters said. "Besides, anyone with an Internet connection feels they have the credentials to critique or belittle anything these days. — Chris Colfer

A novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun. — Katherine Paterson

I seem to only write New York stories because it's the only thing that inspires or interests me. — Jennifer Westfeldt

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. — Annie Dillard

Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence."
Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers. — Karen Karbo

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world. — Michael Chabon

I get very selfish at times. I write about things that are interesting to me. Which are often very different. All of these stories, the thing they have in common is that they were somehow interesting. I feel like they're all dispatches from a worldview. — Wright Thompson

Perspective is the key to everything. — A.D. Posey

Give all of life's oxygen to the fire that is your soul. — A.D. Posey

With every book I write, I give the Hera Leick Promise. I will never weave into my stories: cheating; sex outside the main characters; sexual abuse; cliffhangars; years of separation; man whores; and lastly my worst pet peeve, insta-love. If one sneaks in, I give you permission to shoot me. Please make note, however, guns are not legal in England. Neither is murder. I hope. — Hera Leick

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive. — Etgar Keret

I do not use my intellect to write my stories and books; I have a gut reaction to the things that my subconscious gives me. — Ray Bradbury

Christmas poem to a man in jail
hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it. — Charles Bukowski

I used to do poetry and write stories and stuff - I never really had anybody standing over my shoulder, like, "What did you write? Let me hear it." I hate that type of stuff. — Dreezy

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies. — Frank Ocean

We all write stories in our minds, but only few have the courage to put them on paper. — Sabine Shah

But afterwards in the pub, they had dreamed about the big stories and talked for hours of how they would never be satisfied with the conventional or the shallow but instead would always dig deep. They were young and ambitious and wanted it all, all at once. There were times when Levin missed that, not the salary, or the working hours, or even the easy life in the bars and the women, but the dreams - he missed the power in them. He sometimes longed for that throbbing urge to change society and journalism and to write so that the world would come to a standstill and the mighty powers bow down. Even a hotshot like himself wondered: Where did the dreams go? — David Lagercrantz

One more nice thing about short stories is that you can create a story out of the smallest details -an idea that springs up in your mind, a word, an image, whatever. In most cases it's like jazz improvisation, with the story taking me where it wants to. And another good point is that with short stories you don't have to worry about failing. If the idea doesn't work out the way you hoped it would, you just shrug your shoulders and tell yourself that they can't all be winners. Even with masters of the genre like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver -even Anton Chekhov- not every short story is a masterpiece. I find this a great comfort. You can learn from your mistakes (in other words, those you can't call complete success) and use that in the next story you write. — Haruki Murakami

I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in. — Porochista Khakpour

In my contemporary stories, I write about today's quilters, inventive techniques they use, and how technology has influenced their art. Novels set in the past let me have fun researching patterns that were popular and fabrics and tools available to quilters through history. — Jennifer Chiaverini

For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head can reach the page more frequently. — Wilbur Smith

But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. — Andrew Lang

The more you write, the more you find your voice. I think with my earlier stuff, when I was dabbling, it definitely wasn't there. I was writing like other people I admired. It wasn't until I had a story I had to tell that I could step into my own words. And maybe that's what it'll take for you. Maybe you just haven't had to tell those stories in your head. But the more practice on the stories you'd like to tell, the closer you get to the one you need. — Chessela Helm

You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell. — Orson Scott Card

Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism. — Alice Munro

My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface. — Susan Barker

I don't know if I've ever written anything that's not a bill! I do write stories but I don't put a stamp on them. I wrote a story for my wife over Christmas and gave it to her as a present because she asked me to, but I don't put a stamp on things and send them to people. — Channing Tatum

I really do feel like I was born to write and tell stories. — Christopher Barzak

I recognize that memory is far from infallible though. If I feel like I can't accurately describe something, I just leave it out. I also do things like write "he talked about ... " instead of writing direct quotes. But generally I feel like since my stories are very obviously meant to be my perception of an event rather than the objective truth this gives me a lot of leeway. — Marie Calloway

One of the reasons I began to write was because I wanted stories for my children where the characters spoke as they did and had similar life experiences. — Theresa Breslin

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created. — Philip Schultz

Read a lot. Read broadly ... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored ... Write a lot. — John Green

I write all of my novels and stories, as you have seen, in a great surge of delightful passion. Only recently, glancing at the novel, I realized that Montag is named after a paper manufacturing company. And Faber, of course, is a maker of pencils! What a sly thing my subconscious was, to name them thus. And not tell me! — Ray Bradbury

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write! — Ray Bradbury

When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins, as I begin to hear people's stories, and huge amounts of information begins to comes straight to my doorstep. Then I can write an even better book the next time! — Joseph Chilton Pearce

So long as the people with the power - to hire and fire you, approve or deny your loan, or write up your speeding ticket - look at you through the lens of institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia or any other -sim they've learned form stories, videos, media and other biased individuals, a single win means nothing. We cannot effect true change alone. — Kameron Hurley

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. — Anne Lamott

I always write three or four projects at the same time. They're stories that I want to tell, and usually I dump them unfinished for the next one in order not to get too cornered and depressed about it. — Pawel Pawlikowski

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it. — George R R Martin

I love to write. I write everything across the board - kids' stories and novels and scripts. I actually would like to give that a go; I'd like to try to be a writer. — Evangeline Lilly

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry. — Grace Paley

When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you. — Emma Donoghue

My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters. — Khaled Hosseini

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories. — Martha Wells

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans. — Mario Batali

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out. — Stephen King

I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the 'Secret Annex' are humorous, there's a lot in my diary that speaks, but whether I have real talent remains to be seen. — Anne Frank

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write. — Annie Proulx

Words are such powerful things. We can rip somebody apart with them, we can write words down that can forever hurt another person. We can use them to tell stories and lies. We can misquote them and change what other people said to make ourselves look good ... — Joan Bauer

All my heroines, yes, even the Little Mermaid, even poor, dull, listless Sleeping Beauty, have given me this sense of possibility. They made me feel I wasn't forced to live out the story my family wanted for me, that I wasn't doomed to plod forward to a fate predetermined by God, that I didn't need to be defined by my seizures, or trapped in fictions of my own making, or shaped by other people's stories. That I wanted to write my own life. — Samantha Ellis

One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. That's why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. — Graham Greene

My stories usually begin with the characters and some elements of how power (personal, political, magical) functions in the world. The rest develops as I write, and research helps a great deal with that. If you're going to write about an agrarian economy, research agrarian economies. If your main character is starving, then you should know what it means for a malnourished body to break down. — Leigh Bardugo

The teacher always used me as an example to the class of good English and good storytelling because we all had to write the same stories. But she used to make me go out front - which I hated - and read my story to the class and I would get huge applause. Not because of who I was but because they truly enjoyed the stories I wrote. — Michael Jackson

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working. — Donald Ray Pollock

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me. — Theodora Goss

When Job lifted his face to the Storm, when he asked and was answered, he learned that he was very small. He learned that his life was a story. He spoke with the Author, and learned that the genre had not been an accident. God tells stories that make Sunday school teachers sweat and mothers write their children permission slips excusing them from encountering reality. — N.D. Wilson

About a year after (my stories began being published), magazine editor George Scithers, suggested to me that since I was so new at being published, I must be very close to what I had to learn to move from fooling around with writing to actually producing professional stories. There are a lot of aspiring writers out there who would like to know just that. Write that book.SFWW-I is that book. It's the book I was looking for when I first started writing fiction. — Barry B. Longyear

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish. — Donald Ray Pollock

You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions. — Daniel Radcliffe

I'm trying to write a book based on myself, but i keep changing. — Brandon Stanton

Take lots of time for yourself, discovering yourself-pursue not only a profession but other life passions, I always make time to rock climb or hike or write a few short stories. Also, find good people and surround yourself with them. Most importantly, always believe you will, unequivocally. — Sarah Silverman

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. — Rex Stout

People who take books on sex to bed become frigid. You get self-conscious. You can't think a story. You can't think, "I shall do a story to improve mankind." Well, it's nonsense. All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether or not you love a girl or you love a boy, forget it. You don't. A story is the same way. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it. — Ray Bradbury

Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relationship with the past. Psychotherapy, that widespread method for promoting mental health, relies heavily on memory and on the ability to retrieve and organize images and events from the personal pastIf we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us - to write the first draft and then return for the second draft - we are doing the work of memory. — Patricia Hampl

Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish. — Kate Atkinson

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer ... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody. — Haruki Murakami

Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me. — Catherine Deneuve

Don't allow people to define you based on reading the abstract of your story without even reading chapter 1. Continue to write the remaining chapters. — Assegid Habtewold