Writing P Quotes & Sayings

We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us. Above all, we have to look at the total design of a writer's work, the title he gives to it, and the his main theme, which means his point in writing it, to understand that literature is still doing the same job that mythology did earlier, but filling in its huge cloudy shapes with sharper lights and deeper shadows. [p.32] — Northrop Frye

From the reader's point of view, punctuation provides a map for one who must otherwise drive blindly past the by-ways, intersections, and detours of a writer's thought. — Mina P. Shaughnessy

Poetry is not for profit. Poetry is for Posterity. — Michael P. Naughton

. . .She started to feel a bubble of lightness coming up through her ribs. It had been very fragile at first, but she thought now it was made of something stronger than suds. . .
(p. 121) — Natasha Pulley

Dr. S. talked to me about magical thinking. She was right. Much depends on chance, on what we can't control, on others. She did not say that writing to Boris was a bad idea, but then she never judged anything. That was her magic. [p. 85] — Siri Hustvedt

No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce. — H.P. Lovecraft

I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M. — Anita Shreve

I don't think there is any point in continuing writing. Since I have neither killed nor been killed, there's nothing further to explain. (Box Man, p. 38) — Kobo Abe

Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it. — Gerald Durrell

[ ... ] as I have seen with other people whose sense of their work is vocational rather than pragmatic, my desire to write, to understand things at a depth I can reach in no other way, pushes me to write and go on writing, even when my wants - for an easier or more sociable life, or one less exposed and fraught - are certainly well known to my rational mind. p.293 — Stephanie Dowrick

He was in the frame of mind when a weaker man would have started writing poetry. — P.G. Wodehouse

I've never told another soul about the stories I make up while I'm trying to fall asleep, and I would never even consider writing them down. They're just too personal. Nathan fell silent as well, and I realized that maybe I wasn't the only one who felt that way. I wondered how many people in the world have daydreams spinning around in their heads that they would never put into words. Probably more than you would think. — Alicia Thompson

I think the success of every novel - if it's a novel of action - depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through? — P.G. Wodehouse

In my art history degree course, we did a module on palimpsests - medieval sheets of parchment so costly that, once the text was no longer needed, the sheets were simply scraped clean and reused, leaving the old writing faintly visible through the new. Later, Renaissance artists used the word pentimenti, repentances, to describe mistakes or alterations that were covered with new paint, only to be revealed years or even centuries later as the paint thinned with time, leaving both the original and the revision on view.

Sometimes I have a sense that this house - our relationship in it, with it, with each other - is like a palimpsest or pentimento, that however much we try to overpaint Emma Matthews, she keeps tiptoeing back: a faint image, an enigmatic smile, stealing its way into the corner of the frame. — J.P. Delaney

When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- so I believe. But it is only when these imaginings are written down, passing it seems almost physically from my brain down the arm to my moving hand that they begin to live and move and have their being and assume a different kind of truth. — P.D. James

Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing. — P.G. Wodehouse

Sometimes you write and you find yourself almost wondering how it will turn out. I don't think every writer sort of almost admits that at some stage his books can take on their own kind of life it selves and simply lead away into directions that they're not kind of prepared for. — J.P. Donleavy

I always strive to create a setting that leaves the readers' imagination room to roam. That way, every reader sees the story through their own eyes. — P.S. Bartlett

To you, it's a book to read - a nicely printed stack of paper with a beautiful cover. To me, it's a living, breathing thing that I have invested my heart and soul in. It's much more than a stack of paper to me. It's my imagination - come alive in your hand. — Jason P. Stadtlander

I like writing for children because they are not prejudiced against magic. — J.P. Hightman

In writing I found something I could do at least as well as my peers, if not better. — Brian P. Cleary

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said that the limits of one's language were the limits of one's world. By coming up with fresh and arresting words to describe the world accurately, the writer expands the boundaries of her world, and possibly her readers' world, too. Real writing can do what R. P. Blackmur said it could: add to the stock of available reality. There — Mark Edmundson

If you have one strong idea, you can't help repeating it and embroidering it. Sometimes I think that authors should write one novel and then be put in a gas chamber. — John P. Marquand

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful ... everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility. — James P. Carse

I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book. — Richard P. Denney

Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing. — P.C. Cast

Dear, Missus, Mister - I beg you never to give thoughts to war, in no way, not to work for it, not by writing nor by reading about it nor by looking at the pictures nor on the television about it. Not in any way ever, at all. Not by being a soldier, sailor, airman, work in factory or above all at atom bombs. Above all at atom bombs. No obligation for this, dear fellow creature. Signed Your Fellow Creature.'
'P.S.,' said Gerald slowly, without turning from the window, 'If we all do this, we shall succeed. — Stella Gibbons

Like most kids growing up, I had a very wide interest. I was interested in everything. I tried to take advantage of everything, from the sciences to music to writing to literature. — Michael P. Anderson

In some ways the goals of teaching and writing are the same. You hope to connect to someone else, to make them care about what you care about. So that the things which matter, the things that matter to you, matter to them. — P.F. Kluge

I've had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I've been a pure angel when I come to the end of it. — P.L. Travers

A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law. — H.P. Lovecraft

Books are portals for the imagination, whether one is reading or writing, and unless one is keeping a private journal, writing something that no one is likely to read is like trying to have a conversation when you're all alone. Readers extend and enhance the writer's created work, and they deepen the colors of it with their own imagination and life experiences. In a sense, there's a revision every time one's words are read by someone else, just as surely as there is whenever the writer edits. Nothing is finished or completely dead until both sides quit and it's no longer a part of anyone's thoughts. So it seems almost natural that a lifelong avid reader occasionally wants to construct a mindscape from scratch after wandering happily in those constructed by others. If writing is a collaborative communication between author and reader, then surely there's a time and a place other than writing reviews for readers to 'speak' in the human literary conversation. — P.J. O'Brien

[On writing Jeeves and Wooster stories]:
You tell yourself that you can take Jeeves stories or leave them alone, that one more can't possibly hurt you, because you know you can pull up whenever you feel like it, but it is merely wish-full thinking. The craving has gripped you and there is no resisting it.
You have passed the point of no return. — P.G. Wodehouse

How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'
If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation. — P.G. Wodehouse

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, "Can you rewrite this episode before ... 6 p.m.?" So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up. — Noah Hawley

The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance. — George P. Rowell

Men write great romance because they have more at stake — P.J. Bayliss

I have been writing now for over a week. I find it cleansing, refreshing; it is good for me. (p.531) — Storm Constantine

Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life. — P.L. Travers

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. — William P. Alford

Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me. — H.P. Lovecraft

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night. — H.P. Lovecraft

The key to good writing is to leave Boo Radley in the house until the end of the story. — Michael P. Naughton

As a kid I was told to quit daydreaming! Don't you want to be a success like Joe, who always listens?
Now, I'm an adult and Joe is in jail and I'm writing books, go figure. — P.M. Russell

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world. — P. J. O'Rourke

It is one of the talents of great stylists to make obsolete words cease from appearing obsolete through the way in which they introduce them in their writing. Obsolete words which under the pens of others would seem stilted or out of place, occur most naturally under theirs. This is owing to the tact & judgment of the writers who know when
& when only - the disused term can be introduced, when it is artistically agreeable or linguistically necessary; & of course then the obsolete word becomes obsolete only in name. It is recalled into existence by the natural requirements of a powerful or subtle style. It is not a corpse disinterred (as with less skillful writers) but a beautiful body awaked from a long & refreshing sleep. — Constantine P. Cavafy

I only hold the pen while my mind does the writing — P.J. Bayliss

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk. — W.P. Kinsella

Grab for time to write instead of wait for time. — Julia Cameron

There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression. — H.P. Lovecraft

Writing is agony. I hate it. — P. J. O'Rourke

It's like the P-38 is an old skeleton key I'm trying to fit into an old padlock and when I make that connection I'll hear a click and a door will open and I'll walk through and be saved. — Matthew Quick

I have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman and that Writing ought never to be consider'd but as an elegant Accomplishment to be indulg'd in with infrequency and Discrimination. — H.P. Lovecraft

Writing: Turning one's worst moments into profit. — J.P. Donleavy

An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form. — H.P. Lovecraft

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244] — Annie Dillard

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo. — P.G. Wodehouse

Writing is turning life's worst moments into money. — J.P. Donleavy

I broke with the academic style because I decided that life is very short, very mysterious, and I didn't have the time to waste with academics. I would only say things in the most honesty manner. If people like it, fine. If not, I can't help that. Today I couldn't write academically even if I wanted to! (Rubem Alves, p. 188) — Mev Puleo

One of the most productive times in my early writing life was while I had a full-time job as a word processor in a law firm and also worked part-time at night, often working until 11:00 P.M. — John Lescroart

The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this
whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim. — H.P. Lovecraft

I should think it extremely improbable that anyone ever wrote for money. Naturally, when he has written something, he wants to get as much for it as he can, but that is a very different thing from writing for money. — P.G. Wodehouse

At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense. — El-P

Dear Beloved woman,
Time ... so much time has passed since my love wrote his last words for me.
And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember writing back and for the first time since I had left home I told my love what kind of darkness surrounded me here. I forgot all the sweet things my father had said to my mother when he was away. I forgot how they got her through all those long and lonely nights. — Talon P.S.

Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.

I take a deep breath and pick up my pen. — J.P. Delaney

Prepare for every negotiation ... 1) Focus on Outcomes. What is it that you want to walk away with? Being as specific as possible also increases the likelihood of negotiation success. 2) Support your desired outcome with data that points to its reasonableness. 3) Writing down your key points in advance - and practicing them - enables you to stay focused on what's most important and avoid going off on tangents. 4) Err on the side of asking for more, rather than less [of what you really want]. 5) Be willing to walk away. — Lois P Frankel

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short. — P.G. Wodehouse

Reading the book now means that one can, if one wants, play Fantasy Literature
match writers off against each other and see who won over the long haul. Faulkner or Henry Green? I reckon the surprise champ was P.G. Wodehouse, as elegant and resourceful a prose stylist as anyone held up for our inspection here ... he has turned out to be as enduring as anyone apart from Orwell. Jokes, you see. People do like jokes.
(Hornby's thoughts after reading "Enemies of Promise" by Cyril Connolly) — Nick Hornby

I would probably have been very content as a scholar to have carried on organising exhibitions and writing books and teaching. — Thomas P. Campbell

You can have the finest pen, typewriter, or computer, but without a set of eyes that truly see the world, you might as well have none of it. — Thurman P. Banks Jr.

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

P.S. If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried; therefore I beg you to write and let me know. — Boyle Roche

You don't need special traits, special genes, or special motivation to write a lot. You don't need to want to write--people rarely feel like doing unpleasant tasks that lack deadlines--so don't wait until you feel like it. Productive writing comes from harnessing the power of habit, and habits come from repetition

p.129 — Paul J. Silvia

No. Seriously. Speak American and not this ancient and very fucked-up, confusing olden-day Euro crap. Without the confusing woo-woo refrences, explain why the hell you're writing Zoey off. — P.C. Cast

My thoughts are with you all. Forever conscious of the vast, absurd universe and writing my eternal story I shall remain dead, but dreaming. — A.P. Sweet

Verbal fluency is the product of hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is hte product of hours spent repeating scales." p. 26 — Stanley Fish

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw? — P. J. O'Rourke

Being a writer isn't about writing what you want or what you're comfortable with. It's about having a unique awareness and ability to faithfully retell the stories of others. — P. Anastasia

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. — P.G. Wodehouse

If you can't challenge your own way of thinking, then you can't write various perspectives. The real world rarely agrees, which is also true in fiction. — G.P. Burdon

Everything I did was pure love. Pure love. And if you live that way, you've had a great life. - 'Ray Bradbury: the last interview and other conversations' by Sam Weller (p.92) — Ray Bradbury

When I write I have no loyalty except to historical truth as I see it and care no more about British achievements and mistakes than any other. — A.J.P. Taylor

I cry often.
I cry and cleanse my
face with my tears and
swim to the center
of it all.
A center that
I have written about a
thousand times, forever etched
into the porcelain. — A.P. Sweet

When a day goes by and I haven't written anything, I better have been doing something worth writing about. — P.S. Bartlett

Writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses. — P.G. Wodehouse

I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.
p 179 — Lori Lansens

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start.
(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975) — P.G. Wodehouse

Writing this book required an enormous amount of help from friends. To them goes the credit. I'll take the money. — P. J. O'Rourke

In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs. — H.P. Lovecraft

Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear. — H.P. Lovecraft

And then one day he realised that of course he was always staring at his hand when he wrote, was always watching the pen as it moved along, gripped by his fingers, his fingers floating there in front of his eyes just above the words, above that single white sheet, just above these words i'm writing now, his fingers between him and all that, like another person, a third person, when all along you thot it was just the two of you talking and he suddenly realized it was the three of them, handling it on from one to the other, his hand translating itself, his words slipping thru his fingers into the written world. You. — B.P. Nichol

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing. (p.90) — Natalie Goldberg

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. — H.P. Lovecraft

I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit. — P.G. Wodehouse

The one thing that's terrible about traveling for fun is writing about it. — P. J. O'Rourke

I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing. — P.G. Wodehouse

Writing is a part of life that has to be explored. — P.S. Winn

My father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music. — El-P

For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students. — H.P. Lovecraft