On Writing: More Quotes too Fat for Twitter ...

I love posting quotes on Twitter and Facebook, but often they’re chopped up and edited to fit stringent character limits or are just too long to post because friends and followers alike prefer short sound bites, and if a phrase is longer than Gone with the Wind usually they’ll tune out after the first few sentences. It’s a shame because a lot of the longer quotes on writing are very interesting, and I feel a twinge of horror when I have to edit one of them down into small edible bits. So, here are more Quotes too Fat for Twitter!









❝Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted.❞ ༺༻ Carolyn Heilbrun











❝In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.❞ ༺༻ Fran Lebowitz

❝Read, read, read. Read everything- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞ ༺༻ William Faulkner

❝Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.❞ ༺༻ William Strunk, Jr.

❝A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.❞ ༺༻ Patricia Lee Gauch

❝Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded.❞ ༺༻ Sidney Sheldon

❝The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.❞ ༺༻ Robert Cormier

❝Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.❞ ༺༻ Richard North Patterson

❝Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.❞ ༺༻ Edmund Morrison

❝What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.❞ ༺༻ Thomas Wolfe

❝The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.❞ ༺༻ Janet Frame

❝If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not -- and the odds are against it -- go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper -- write.❞ ༺༻ J. B. Priestly

❝Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.❞ ༺༻ Bonnie Friedman

❝Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.❞ ༺༻ E. L. Konigsburg

Note: I've posted this next one previously, but I like it so much I'm posting it again ...

❝If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.❞ ༺༻ Ray Bradbury

 Got a long quote that won’t fit Twitter? Send it along and I’ll post it in future additions of Quotes Too Fat for Twitter ...

Thanks for stopping by the Den. Take care now, and keep scribbling …

In case you missed it: Quotes too Fat for Twitter || Part one