Quotes for Walls of a Writing-Reading Workshop
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise. - Collette
If you have a minimum of talent, but you sit at that typewriter long enough,
something will emerge. All I had was this burning desire to be a writer and all
these emotions. – Robert Cormier
The hardest battle is to be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best,
night and day, to make you like everybody else. – E. E. Cummings
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. –
Emily Dickinson
If there is no struggle there can be no progress. – Frederick Douglass
The important thing is not to stop questioning. – Albert Einstein
A thread runs through all things: all worlds are strung on it as beads; and men,
and events, and life, come to us, only because of that thread. – Emerson
‘Tis the good reader that makes a good book. – Emerson
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi
There were no books that showed what was really going on with teenagers. I
wrote The Outsiders because I wanted to read it. – S. E. Hinton
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to
you. – Aldous Huxley
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything you risk even more. – Erica Jong
One can never be alone enough when one writes…there can never be enough
silence around when one writes…even night is not night enough. – Franz Kafka
I know a poem is finished when I can’t find another word to cut. – Bobbi Katz
Fiction is truth’s older sister. – Rudyard Kipling
I try to leave out the parts that people skip. – Elmore Leonard
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve
understood all your life, but in a new way. – Doris Lessing
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. – Audre Lord
No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. – Thomas Mann
The days that make us happy make us wise. – John Masefield
The difficulty in life is the choice. – George Moore
Write what makes you happy. – O. Henry
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? – Mary
Oliver
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having
new eyes. – Marcel Proust
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it were. I would only open my
eyes a little more. – Jules Renard
The moment of change is the only poem. – Adrienne Rich
Be patient toward al that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves. – Rainer Maria Rilke
You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Writing stories has given me the power to change things I could not change as a
child. I can make boys into doctors. I can make fathers stop drinking. I can make
mothers stay. – Cynthia Rylant
A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than
a life spent in doing nothing. – George Bernard Shaw
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with
my eyes hanging out. – Dylan Thomas
Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. – Mark Twain
Reader and writer, we wish each other well. Don’t we want and don’t we
understand the same thing? A story of beauty and passion, some fresh
approximation of human truth? – Eudora Welty
Say it, no ideas but in things. – William Carlos Williams
Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us
trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves. – Virginia
Woolf
I love to write. I love the process. And I never think of the outcome. I just love
the time I spend alone in a room adding words one by one to create a universe
that is mine. And that is what I like. – Isabel Allende
You have to write every day. You don’t have to write a story every day, or a
poem every day; but you have to write something every day, because writing, as I
said before, is a muscle. And it needs to be exercised. – Jane Yolen
I probably shouldn’t say this, but I write in my writing room with CNN all the
time. I want to know the news, and so there are these voices. I kind of use them
as noise that helps me focus on my story. I can’t play music when I work,
because I start typing in rhythm. So that doesn’t work. – Patricia MacLachlan
Be part of your own writing community. Often the first step in doing this is
simply to let yourself become identified as One Who Cares About Writing! –
Naomi Shihab Nye
When one is a writer, actor, dancer, musician of any kind, he or she does these
things because they listen to that voice inside them. All of us have that voice.
– Patricia Polacco
The notebook is a private place where you can think and where you can be
dumb, stupid, sloppy, silly; where you can do all the bad writing and bad
thinking essential for those moments of insight that produce good writing.
–Donald Murray
Want to know my secret? BIC. That’s right. BIC. Butt in chair. There is no other
single thing that will help you more to become a writer. – Jane Yolen
I never assume that anything I write in my notebook is going to be worked into
something larger. It would be unrealistic and it would pressure me into thinking
that every entry is crucial. I try to cultivate a relaxed alertness that picks up bits
and pieces that I may or may not use. – Naomi Shihab Nye
The secret ingredient to good writing is time. You will amaze yourself at what a
good writer you are if you spend time on it. –Andrew Clements
But not knowing what to put down for the next sentence is what my life is all
about in the sense that you’re always struggling to make sure it’s right; it’s wellwritten, and what comes next. And that’s not writer’s block; that’s writing. –Avi
The journal helps us remember the motto: the more we write, the more we have
to write. – Naomi Shihab Nye
I like to pick something that has roots attached to it and says something about
human nature or the way we live. The key is wanting to write it. –Susan Trausch
I find the problem is not so much getting ideas for stories as it is choosing from
among the many stories I’d like to do. –Sally Jacobs
Being a writer means that I can explore myself: It’s impossible to write well about
any subject without examining your own deepest feelings about it. – Russell
Freedman
The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing,
the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary. –Stephen
King
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain
top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed and
quietly putting one bead on after another. –Brenda Ueland
The goal is not a number of words or hours spent writing. All you need is to
keep your heart and mind open to work. –Walter Mosley
I love that first flush, that first draft, when things are happening. That’s the
hardest part, too. –Jean M. Auel
I work from about seven until about noon. Then I go fishing or swimming,
whatever I want. The best way is always to stop when you are going good. If you
do that, you’ll never be stuck. –Ernest Hemingway
Over the years, I’ve come to accept the truth that I rarely can get a good draft in
one try. The more I revise, usually, the better it gets – and by a lot, not a little. In
fact, I’ve come to like revising. –Richard Saltus
Rewriting is the essence of writing well; it’s where the game is won or lost. –
William Zinsser
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightening and the lightening bug. –Mark Twain
I notice that when it’s going badly, I will, for instance, take out Charlotte’s Web. I
will read the barn scene – a description. Or, I’ll take out Natalie Babbit’s Tuck
Everlasting. And what it says to you is, “This is the way words are supposed to
go together. This is the way you set up a scene.” I think it’s inspiration, and I
think you learn from it. – Patricia MacLachlan
There are many rules of good writing, and the best way to find them is to be a
good reader. –Stephen Ambrose
There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach
it soon enough. –Willam Zinsser
The reward, for me, is not monetary. It is the personal satisfaction that comes
when you ring the bell and know it: when you know you have completely
expressed your idea. –William Faulkner