Quotes on Writing K

• Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals. ~ Michael Kanin

• The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal. ~ Elia Kazan

• One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds. ~ Alfred Kazin

• The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~ Alfred Kazin

• Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~ Franz Kafka

• When we read, we stat at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out. ~ Vickie Karp

• My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

• I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop. ~ Clarence Budington Kelland

• Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller

• It helps to read the sentence aloud. ~ Harry Kemelman

• Don’t think and then write it down. Think on paper. ~ Harry Kemelman

• Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. ~ Robert Francis Kennedy

• I am a part of all I have read. ~ John Kieran

• If you would write emotionally, be first unemotional. If you would move your readers to tears, do not let them see you cry. ~ James J. Kilpatrick

• The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along. ~ James J. Kilpatrick

• It is crazy even to ask what creativity is. It would be just as useful to interview a caraway plant in your garden and ask: “How did you decided to be a spice?” ~ Eeva Kilpi

• There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively. ~ Min Kim

• Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide. ~ Larry L. King

• Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. ~ Stephen King

• Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie. ~ Stephen King
• It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that. ~ Stephen King

• I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. ~ Stephen King

• Your stuff starts out being just for you… but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. ~ Stephen King

• As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. ~ Stephen King

• If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse-shit. ~ Stephen King

• Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. ~ Stephen King

• One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. ~ Stephen King

• Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do - not why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad. ~ Stephen King

• Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it. ~ Stephen King

• The important question has nothing to do with whether the talk in your story is sacred or profane; the only question is how it rings on the page and in your ear. If you expect it to ring true, then you must talk yourself. Even more important, you must shut up and listen to others talk. ~ Stephen King

• It’s dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters. ~ Stephen King

• Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft. ~ Stephen King

• As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be? ~ Stephen King

• Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. ~ Charles Kingsley

• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

• This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

• There is no perfect time to write. There is only now. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

• Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down. ~ W. B. Kinsella

• Read! Read! Read! And then read some more. When you find something that thrills you, take it apart paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, to see what made it so wonderful. Then use those tricks next time you write. ~ W.P. Kinsella

• Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. ~ Rudyard Kipling

• Poets are interested mostly in death and commas. ~ Carolyn Kizer

• The trouble with science fiction is that you can write about everything: time, space, all the future, all the past, all of the universe, any kind of creature imaginable. That's too big. It provides no focus for the artist. An artist needs, in order to function, some narrowing of focus. Usually, in the history of art, the narrower the focus in which the artist is forced to work, the greater the art. ~ Philip Klass

• Stories open up new paths, sometimes send us back to old ones, and close off still others. Telling and listening to stories we too imaginatively walk down those paths – paths of longing, paths of hope, paths of desperation. ~ Arthur Kleinman

• We are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do. ~ Arthur Kleinman

• The title to a work of writing is like a house's front porch.... It should invite you to come on in. ~ Angela Giles Klocke

• A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. ~ Karl Kraus

• Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up. ~ Nancy Kress

• [Writing is] tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January. But, as any creative person will tell you, there are days when there's absolutely nothing sweeter than creating something from nothing. ~ Richard Krzemien

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