Author's Quotes

by Adrian Sroka
17th February 2016

Please list your favourites quotes by authors on-writing. I have listed 3, but list as many as you want.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand - George Orwell

Good writing is rewriting - Truman Capote

Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts - Larry L. King

Replies

Frederick Forsyth, in his latest book The Outsider, hardly mentions writing at all or at least writing techniques. The book is unputdownable yet it's all about action - how he wanted to be an RAF pilot and became one; how he learnt various languages by actually going to live in those countries; how he became a newspaper reporter after he couldn't remain in the RAF; how he covered a war in Nigeria and worked as a reporter in Communist East Berlin, almost causing a third world war. Right up to his seventies he remained a man of action, and brought up his two sons to be like him. The writing just seemed to occur naturally. He wrote a best-seller in the 1960s, Day of the Jackal, and has continued till the present day doing the same. His life seems to conflict with everything the textbooks say about writing successful novels.

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Anthony
Doran
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Anthony Doran
18/02/2016