Blogger: Rachel Kent
I hope you had a wonderful weekend! Here are some of my favorite quotes about writing and the imagination:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. –Albert Einstein
People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it. –Harlan Ellison
Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. –Ray Bradbury
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
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. –William Faulkner
If you have other things in your life–family, friends, good productive day work–these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer. –David Brin
It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition. –Isaac Asimov
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. –Orson Scott Card.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. –Richard Bach
Write what you know. Write what you want to know more about. Write what you’re afraid to write about. –Cec Murphy
Which of these quotes is your favorite? Do you have a favorite quote about writing and imagination that isn’t part of my list? Please share!
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I love the Orson Scott Card quote. I believe people who write see the world differently. I also believe it is important as Brin said to have a full life to call on outside your writing. I really appreciate the quotes from established authors. It kind of helps to know they’ve been on the path I am on now. It is somehow comforting.
I have several pages of “favorite” quotes – Orson Scott Card and Richard Bach;s are both there! 😀
A couple of my other favorites:
I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly. – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. – Anne McCaffrey
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. – E. L. Doctorow
I dream a world every day,
wish I could make it real,
and could somehow find a way
that I might take a meal.
I dream a world every night
in which my soul would fain
live in a place free of fright,
and free of cancer’s pain.
I dream a world this very week
that I might rise above
the dull escape I’m force to seek
and dance abroad with love.
But at the top of my dream-lists
is to nurture hope that hope exists.
Andrew, this brought me to tears. I love how you express things. My favorite line is the last one because I’ve always been a person of hope even through all the health issues…or maybe, especially through all the health issues. In fact, I just had my website redesigned and it’s now called Encouraging Hope. God bless, my one-day-I’ll-meet brother.
I love the one by Bach, that a professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. I saw the cutest shirt the other day that had a typewriter on it and said: “I make stuff up.” I thought: When can I wear that? Persist. Don’t give up.
The quote about seeing stories as we walk down the street resonated with me. My youngest son is reading his Ender’s Game series right now and is enthralled!
I don’t know where this quote originated, but I saw it on a site dedicated to music: “The master has failed more times than the novice has tried.”
I think it applies to any creative endeavor.
There are several of these that resonate with me. First is from Cec Murphy probably because it’s true and because his book was the first place I received the tickle of an itch to write seriously. The second one that speaks to me is from Orson Scott Card. I have been looked at quizzically and told I was nuts because of the stories I’ve created on the spur of the moment while walking or driving along. So, I’m not so crazy after all. ; )