Quotes about Writing: F

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. ~ Clifton Fadiman
Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write. ~ James T. Farrell
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. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window. ~ William Faulkner
A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. ~ William Faulkner
A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction. ~ William Faulkner
..the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself... alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the sweat and the agony. ~ William Faulkner
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. ~ William Faulkner

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance--that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be--curiosity--to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not. ~ William Faulkner
The artist's only responsibility is his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies. ~ William Faulkner
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. ~ William Faulkner
I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it. ~ William Faulkner
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good. ~ William Faulkner
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does. ~ William Faulkner
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. ~ William Feather
Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw. ~ Jules Feifer

There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently untalented writer can't screw it up. ~ Raymond Feist
Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth... But amusing? Never. ~ Edna Ferber
The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible. ~ Edna Ferber
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death--fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous constant. ~ Edna Ferber
The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write. ~ Gabriel Fielding
To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them. ~ Henry Fielding
You can stroke people with words. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writers aren't exactly people.... they're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created - nothing. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and worry and endless ratiocination of a subject - of endless trying to dig out of the essential truth, the essential justice. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
A writer wastes nothing. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. ~ Gustave Flaubert
It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. ~ Gustave Flaubert
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~ Gustave Flaubert
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living. ~ Gustave Flaubert
No one should ever have to read a sentence twice because of the way it is put together. ~ Wilson Follett
You can't say, I won't write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then� you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer. ~ Dorothy C. Fontana
Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs. ~ Malcolm Forbes

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story�and then your story! ~ Ford Madox Ford
Observe, don't imitate. ~ John M. Ford
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. ~ Henry Ford
How do I know what I think, until I see what I say? ~ E.M. Forster
The historian records, but the novelist creates. ~ E. M. Forster
A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life. ~ E. M. Forster
Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages. ~ E. M. Forster
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out. ~ E. M. Forster

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~ Gene Fowler
Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts. ~ Gene Fowler
An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to. ~ Gene Fowler
The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying . . . : Have you got that? If so, I�ll go to the next point. ~ H. W. Fowler
There are many reasons why novelists write � but they all have one thing in common: a need to create an alternative world. ~ John Fowles
The other day I asked a well-known editor to define the general fault in all the books she�d rejected, and she said, �Too much imagination, not enough technique.� But this is the prime source of why people write novels, I think; it�s trying to make the one behind, the technique, catch up. It sounds a negative thing as she put it, but I don�t think it is really. All of us know that our technique is never good enough for our imagination. We can always imagine more beautifully, more precisely, more cleverly, more romantically�more than we can ever get it down on paper. This lack haunts all novel writing. ~ John Fowles
On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It�s very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It�s a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult. ~ John Fowles

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
Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination. ~ Janet Frame
A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so. ~ Anatole France
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. ~ Anatole France
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences. ~ Anatole France
I like to use as few commas as possible so that sentences will go down in one swallow without touching the sides. ~ Pamela Frankau
Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes. ~ Benjamin Franklin
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict and conflict. ~ James Frey
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
What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a check. ~ Brendan Francis
Writers write for fame, wealth, power and the love of women. ~ Sigmund Freud
All the fun is in how you say a thing. ~ Robert Frost
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. ~ Robert Frost
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country. ~ Robert Frost
An artist's sensitivity to criticism is, at least in part, an effort to keep unimpaired the zest, or confidence, or arrogance, which he needs to make creation possible; or an instinct to climb through his problems in his own way as he should, and must. ~ - Christopher Fry
Writing is a struggle against silence. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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