Writerly Life Quotes & Sayings

For what I could say to you about your inclination to doubt or about your inability to bring your inner and outer life into harmony, or about everything else that causes you concern
it is always that which I have already said: it is always my wish that you might find enough patience within yourself to endure, and enough innocence to have faith. It is my wish that you might gain more and more trust in whatever is difficult for you, in your aloneness, among other thing. Allow life to happen to you. Believe me, life is right in all cases. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I was treated once more to a novelist's valuable lesson, however - in apprehending that one's perception of plot and character are influenced entirely by one's own experience. To hear Mary tell the story of our Christmas at The Vyne, one would have thought that she was hounded by violence from first to last - perceived more than anybody of the nature of the probable murderer - and barely escaped with her life. It was a lesson in writerly humility. We are each the heroines of our own lives. — Stephanie Barron

The Lilly girl is always full of surprises. She lives everyday like it's a celebration, never has a dull moment, and makes every hour a happy hour. — Lilly Pulitzer

Much advice on writing has the tone of moral counsel, as if being a good writer will make you a better person. Unfortunately for cosmic justice, many gifted writers are scoundrels, and many inept ones are the salt of the earth. But the imperative to overcome the curse of knowledge may be the bit of writerly advice that comes closest to being sound moral advice: always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mindset and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers. — Steven Pinker

Shall we keep our hands in our bosom, or stretch ourselves on our beds of laziness, while all the world about us is hard at work, in pursuing the designs of its creation? — Isaac Barrow

We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts. — R.K. Narayan

If someone should ask, "how should an Opposition function?" the best answer would be, "in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments. — R.K. Narayan

Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are. — Jo Deurbrouck

Childhood's over the moment you know you're going to die. — Michael Wincott

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. — R.K. Narayan

It felt like too much. Not too much to have, just too much to contemplate. Commitments like boulders that were too heavy to carry. — Rainbow Rowell

No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it. — R.K. Narayan

You don't wish me well when you tell me the sky is my limit. You bind me within its realm. I prefer to hear that I am my limit, not the sky, because beyond our sky lays the moon, the sun, the milky way, other universes and the possibilities are limitless. — Sahndra Fon Dufe

Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people. — Chris Squire

The monkeys, she explained, were considered reincarnated politicians, which made Rue laugh and the stick entirely understandable. — Gail Carriger

Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence. — Honore De Balzac

The ecstatic insanity of romantic pursuit can be so enhanced by music that entire romantic conquests, victories and ruinous, crushing defeats can be tied to songs to such a degree that it's almost unbearable to listen to them again, as they bring back the memories so vividly. — Henry Rollins

I've noticed over the past years of my writerly life that women writers in particular are discouraged in cleverly disguised forms from including the intellectual in their creative material way more than you would believe. — Lidia Yuknavitch